The word ‘cryptography’ was coined by combining two Greek words, ‘Krypto’ meaning hidden and ‘graphene’ meaning writing.
Cryptography can be defined as the art and science of concealing the messages to introduce secrecy in information.
The art of cryptography is considered to be born along with the art of writing.
As civilizations evolved & human beings got organized, the ideas of power, politics & secrecy emerged.
These ideas further fueled the natural need of people to communicate #privately.
Two inherent needs of humans – gave rise to the art of coding the messages in such a way that only the intended receivers could decode the information.
Unauthorized people could not extract any information, even if the scrambled messages fell in their hands.
We can attest to this thanks to findings in #Roman and #Egyptian civilizations.
The first known evidence of cryptography can be traced to the use of hieroglyphs.
Some 4000 years ago, the Egyptians used to communicate by messages written in hieroglyphs.
Hieroglyph − The Oldest Cryptographic Technique
This code was the secret known only to the scribes who used to transmit messages on behalf of the kings.
However, it’s worth noting that not all hieroglyphs can be said to be cryptographic.
Later, the cryptography scholars moved on to using simple mono-alphabetic substitution ciphers during 500 to 600 BC.
This involved creating alphabetic messages that could be decoded through a secret rule. You needed to know the rule to retrieve the garbled message.
Another earlier Roman method of cryptography, popularly known as the Caesar Shift Cipher, relies on shifting the letters of a message by an agreed number.
The recipient of a message would shift the letters back by the same number & obtain the original message.
During and after the European Renaissance, various Italian and Papal states led to the rapid proliferation of cryptographic techniques.
Various analysis and attack techniques were researched in this era to break the secret #codes.
Only after the 19th century did cryptography evolve from ad hoc approaches to sophisticated encryption.
In the early 20th century, the invention of mechanical & electromechanical machines, such as the #Enigma rotor machine, provided more advanced means of coding information.
In the 21st century, cryptography is within the reach of common people as it’s used as an underlying support for almost all of our everyday tech
Today, cryptography is used to provide secrecy & integrity to our data, and both to authenticate and add privacy to our communications
When we look at cryptography and its close association with human civilization, we understand that privacy is an innate human need, a fundamental right. Protecting privacy is key to ensuring human dignity, safety, and self-determination.
In crypto nos confídimus!
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Every once in a while, a new technology comes around & changes the trajectory of human civilization
From the motor engine & airplanes to telephones, the Internet, & even blockchain technology, these innovations had a massive impact & inevitably changed the course of our history
Next on the list, even if some don’t realize it, is zero-knowledge proofs.
Zero-knowledge proofs are one of the key elements that’ll be driving the massive change in our lives, our trust models, and most importantly – privacy.
Just like #blockchains changed the idea of transferring values without a middleman, zero-knowledge proofs are changing the way we reveal sensitive data.
Why’s everyone so excited about the possibilities of zk-SNARKs?
What makes them believe it’s a paradigm change in how we interact with each other in the 21st century?
The only way to figure that out is to look at the actual utilities of #zkSNARKs – A thread 🧵👇
Zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (zk-SNARKs) are a truly ingenious method of proving that something is true without revealing any other information.
Let’s have a look at zk-SNARK utilities. These can be broadly classified into four categories: ⏬
#1: Anonymous authorization
Anonymous authorizations using zk-SNARKs can prove that one owns a monthly pass to a subway/metro without revealing the card’s ID.
Or prove that one is in a list of allowed countries/states without revealing from which one exactly.
Who's up for an update before leaving for the weekend?
🧵Let's take a quick look at some of this week's developments. 🧵
Our tech team continues to move through your feedback for #Zafari Advanced Staking.
We're moving forward, knocking out the most critical items so we can move to the next round.
We also reached (and exceeded!) our follower goal in #CoinMarketCap.
Thanks to over 2700 of you, we are now within a select group of #Gravity members, which will open up incredible networking and partnership opportunities for $ZKP.
Here's the current status of LaunchDAO registration:
- We have reached 4200 registrations just now which so far is a great turnout!
2/4
We have identified a small issue where a tiny portion of KYCd users were not able to register for LaunchDAO. Their wallets were deemed invalid due to a syntax issue.
Our team is about to deploy a solution to allow for all of you who had issues to register for LaunchDAO! 🚀
3/4
Tomorrow, 2pm GMT we intend on deploying the $PreZKP minting and claiming functionality. 😎
We will send an email to everyone who has performed KYC to invite them to Claim their $preZKP and register, if they haven't already.
24h ago we kicked off registrations for LaunchDAO. 🔥
So far, over 3600 community members have registered to participate in an industry first: We are going to vote for launching the @ZKPanther protocol in a private, decentralized manner.
This is huge. Why?
2/4
The number of registered users is extremely relevant (and growing).