A zero-knowledge proof is a concept in cryptography where one party (the prover) can prove to another party (the verifier) that a given statement is true, without conveying any information beyond the mere fact of the statement’s truth¹.

This means they don’t prove something with as much certainty as simply revealing the entire information would².

The intuition underlying zero-knowledge proofs is that it is trivial to prove the possession of certain information by simply revealing it; the challenge is to prove this possession without revealing the information, or any aspect of it whatsoever¹.

In light of the fact that one should be able to generate a proof of some statement only when in possession of certain secret information connected to the statement, the verifier, even after having become convinced of the statement’s truth, should nonetheless remain unable to prove the statement to third parties¹.

Zero-knowledge proofs were originally proposed by MIT researchers Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali and Charles Rackoff in the 1980s².

They are probabilistic assessments, which means they don’t prove something with as much certainty as simply revealing the entire information would².

They provide unlinkable information that can together show the validity of the assertion is probable².