Thread by @sethforprivacy

It's *very* early, but I've started collecting resources, open questions, and proposed efforts to explore how trustless zk-SNARKs could be useful for a potential future #Monero protocol update:

github.com/monero-project…

If you have useful resources or questions, please reach out!

The goal here is to build a go-to resource that marries the promise of trustless zk-SNARKs with the specifics of Monero's payment protocol to ease potential research and interest by Monero developers and researchers, not to push for implementing zk-SNARKs ASAP.

I'll be working on a blog post to detail why they're worth exploring in more depth and what the associated pros/cons are, but a few notes:

- Seraphis is still the path forward for Monero, we're focused on that
- Ring signatures are still working very well in the real world

- Trustless zk-SNARKs are not the same thing as Zcash, they have a much broader usage and much broader academic base, and should be viewed as related but separate topics
- Interest in trustless zk-SNARKs does not imply Zcash is perfect or my goal/ideal

Very hopeful the Monero community can stay open to technology outside of it's norm, explore it, figure out what's useful for Monero and what's not, and push past tribalism to keep Monero ahead of the game.

Much of Monero's protocol was invented or developed for other cryptocurrencies and then built out and improved upon by Monero devs and researchers.

Let's stay open to that while championing "internal" dev/research work like Seraphis that aligns extremely well with our goals.

One further clarification -- this isn't "ring sigs vs zk-SNARKs", zk-SNARKS are a generic proving system with specific properties.

zk-SNARKs are really a different approach to a proving system that could be useful in building a future version of the Monero payment protocol.