Bulletproofs – Short zero-knowledge arguments of knowledge
Zero knowledge proofs are fascinating - as a non-mathematician, I particularly enjoy real-world examples.<p>Two famous examples (&quot;The Ali Baba Cave&quot; and the &quot;Two Balls and the Color Blind Friend&quot;) appear in the Wikipedia article on zero knowledge proofs [1].<p>My favorite, however, is this paper [2] on convincing another person you&#x27;ve found Waldo, without revealing his location and therefore ruining the game. It&#x27;s extraordinarily simple: take a piece of cardboard larger than the Where&#x27;s Waldo book, make a small, Waldo-sized cutout, and position the cardboard in a way that only Waldo himself is visible. As long as you don&#x27;t give away the position of the book underneath the cardboard, you can prove you&#x27;ve found Waldo without providing _any_ information as to where he is! It&#x27;s pretty great.<p>Would love to know of other real world examples. :-)<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Zero-knowledge_proof#The_Ali_Baba_cave" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Zero-knowledge_proof#The_Ali_B...</a>
[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il&#x2F;~naor&#x2F;PAPERS&#x2F;waldo.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il&#x2F;~naor&#x2F;PAPERS&#x2F;waldo.pdf</a>