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Zero-knowledge proofs

A zero-knowledge proof is a cryptographic mechanism to prove you know a secret without revealing the secret. This is possible through the use of complex math under the hood. Thanks to the cryptographers who worked on the moonmath for us.

A simple example of a ZKP is that you can cryptographically prove you are above 18 years of age without revealing your date of birth, actual age or any other information.

A ZKP should have the following properties:

• Completeness: If you are above 18, verifier will be convinced with a high probability.
• Soundness: Very low probability of cheating.
• Zero knowledge: Your exact age is not shared.

How does World ID use ZKPs?

After the orb verifies you are a unique human, your identity commitment is added to a public list of verified humans. Everytime you want to prove you are a unique person, your World app generates a ZKP that proves you know the secret to an identity commitment, without revealing which one. Holistically, World ID ZKPs prove these three things:

• Membership: "I'm a member of this group". You prove you are a member of the verified identities list.
• One-shot: "I haven't done this before in this context". This is achieved through nullifiers. Nullifiers are random numbers, unique to each user for each context (i.e. for each action ID).
• Signal: "I want to include this message". This allows the user to add extra data to the request. It could be a receiver address when claiming an airdrop, or a vote when participating in governance. This mitigates an attack where an attacker could intercept a transaction with a proof and change the vote.

If you want to learn more about ZKPs, we recommend the resources found here: https://github.com/ingonyama-zk/ingopedia.