Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney talks zk proofs in 25-year-old unearthed footage

cointelegraph.com:

Early Bitcoin (BTC) pioneer Hal Finney shared his vision for zero-knowledge proofs more than 25 years ago, a full decade before the launch of the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. 

The video, purportedly from the Crypto ‘98 conference held on Aug. 26, 1998, in Santa Barbara, shows Finney discussing in detail, the concept of zero-knowledge proofs — a cryptographic technology that gained immense popularity decades later.

️ NEW: Bitcoin legend Hal Finney discusses Zero-Knowledge Proofs in a newly unearthed presentation, made 25 years ago at Crypto '98 in Santa Barbara.

Have you ever heard @halfin's voice before? pic.twitter.com/HdddworTsg

Finney explains how one could hypothetically perform a zero-knowledge proof on a SHA-1 hash, describing the possibility of sending a cryptographically encrypted claim without revealing any of the details contained within the same claim.

“I want to prove to you that I know a message that hashes to a given hash value using the SHA-1 hash. I don't want to reveal anything about the message to you. It's a zero-knowledge proof, and I've written a program to do this that I'll tell you about,” explained Finney.

A zero-knowledge (ZK) proof is a cryptographic protocol that enables one user (the prover) to convince another (the verifier) that a particular claim is true without disclosing any details about the claim itself.

At the time of Finney’s speech, zero-knowledge proofs were considered to be a possibility, but due to hardware limitations at the time were widely regarded, as Finney puts it: “inefficient or impractical.”

Related: Idealistic Ethereum community-built zkEVM Scroll launching in weeks

Decades later, the crypto industry is now abuzz with discussions and debates on how best to implement