The protocol concept was invented and published back in 1989 by a group of scientists - Shafi Goldwasser, Charles Reckoff and Silvio Micali. The essence of the concept was to build the principle of data transfer, taking as a basis the amount of information for the proof, which is transferred from the prover to the verifier.
What is the general meaning of the protocol. There are 2 sides - the prover and the verifier. The task of the prover is to confirm that he has certain information without disclosing it. The task of the verifier, respectively, is to make sure of the reliability of the information that is received from the prover. An interesting characteristic is that there can be countless cycles of communication until the parties reach a consensus.
In practice, it looks like this - the prover (side 1) selects a certain element, making it a private key (secret). On the basis of the generated private key, a public key is generated, which is then published. Using received published data from the secret, side 1 passes the proof to the verifier (side 2). Next, side 2, based on the data, forms a request to which side 1 must respond. After that, the first side sends a response to this request. The cycle is repeated until the verifying side is convinced that the proving side really has the secret and is part of the system.
Benefits of implementing ZKP.
In the future, this protocol will allow to refuse the use of confidential data that can be intercepted to gain access - passwords and access codes. However, if passwords can usually be recovered within a particular digital structure, then if you lose access to the information used to transmit evidence, you also lose all access to data in the system.
Where Zero Knowledge Proof has been successfully applied:
Zcash - a cryptocurrency based on the zk-SNARKs technology, which allows you to keep transactions encrypted and at the same time checks them for full compliance with consensus rules.
Quorum - one of the branches of the ETH blockchain, which uses its own type of Constellation smart contracts. It also uses a slightly revised version of zk-SNARKs, i.e. the same ZKP
We can surely talk about the further development and application of the technology since the prospects for its application are practically limitless.
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