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Privacy-Enhancing Cryptography PEC

Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP)

A main tool of Privacy-Enhancing Cryptography (PEC) is the Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP). It enables proving the truthfulness of a mathematical statement, without revealing additional information that may have been useful in finding said truthfulness. For technical reasons, it is often useful to refer to a "ZKP of Knowledge", where the proof that a statement is true is done by proxy of proving knowledge of some secret information (witness) that is consistent with a public instance that supports the statement. For example:

  • Statement: "The number N is a valid RSA signing key"
  • Instance: N
  • Witness: Secret primes P and Q, satisfying P*Q = N and other properties required by FIPS 186-5

Besides being useful on their own, ZKPs are also useful in establishing correct behavior in other cryptography protocols, such as in Secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC). The NIST PEC project is accompanying ZKP developments and initiatives toward future useful standards.

ZKP in the NIST Threshold Call:

The Subcategory 2.6 of the NIST First Call for Multi-Party Threshold Schemes (NISTIR 8214C ipd) calls for submission of zero-knowledge proofs of knowledge (ZKPoK). The deadline (expectably in 2025) will be established in the final version of IR 8214C. The Threshold Call encourages the community of experts to participate in the process, by submitting ZKPoK schemes, and/or subsequently supporting their public analysis.

Some ZKP-related talks hosted by NIST, by external speakers:

NIST-PEC collaboration with ZKProof:

NIST has collaborated with the ZKProof initiative since 2019, as a way of supporting the development of open reference material on zero-knowledge proofs. This page lists some outputs of this interaction:

Past ZKProof-related talks by PEC members:

(Some talks were jointly presented with other ZKProof Editors)

ZKProof Reference Material (Selected links):

Created January 03, 2017, Updated February 05, 2025