Online Identity with Verifiable Credentials and ZKPs Using High School Math - Stephen Curran, Government of British Columbia
Online identity doesn't have to be stuck in today's surveillance paradigms. Privacy-preserving verifiable credentials built on zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) can be game changers for digital identity and trust. Hyperledger AnonCreds is an open source implementation of verifiable credentials (VCs)--digital versions of the paper credentials we use daily to share information about ourselves. AnonCreds (Anonymous Credentials) extend the VC model using ZKPs to include important privacy-preserving capabilities that can enable online trust without tracking. ZKPs allow you to prove something is true to another party without conveying any additional information. The classic example is proving (not just claiming) you are over the age of 19 based on your date of birth without actually revealing your date of birth. In this session, we'll provide an overview of the AnonCreds project, dive down (but just to a high school math level) into the magic of ZKPs, and show how privacy-preserving online identity solutions can be enabled with the ZKPs found in the AnonCreds specification and implementations. We'll cover how ZKPs are used in AnonCreds, run some peer-to-peer agents to see AnonCreds in action, and discuss how verifiable credentials can play a key identity role in the Metaverse.
