Proving something is true without showing any information. Concept first mentioned in a 1985 paper. Can prove it to a very high probability, but cannot give air-tight proofs. Used in Nuclear weapons policy decisions.
Types
- Interactive
- Proof has to be performed at each request seperately
- Non Interactive
- Can be computationally intensive
- Zcash is working on a lighter algorithm
Definition
A formal definition of zero-knowledge has to use some computational model, the most common being that of a Turing machine.
(Read Wikipedia definition using notations and Probabilistic Turing Machine)