Privacy is one of the main concerns in the industry. If you know the address of the individual's wallet, you can use it to track all the transactions made through it.
Zero-knowledge proof is a technique that allows for a transaction to be verified without the data being shared. Zero-knowledge proof is not the only way to improve privacy and speed up progress in web3.
The co-founder and CEO of Sunscreen thinks that the potential to bolster privacy in the web is even more promising. Solomon explained that the technology allows people to perform computations on data that is locked up. Financial institutions could use FHE to slice and dice transaction data to detect potential fraud while maintaining more privacy for customers than is currently the norm.
Zero-knowledge proof can offer a lot of things to web three. There are many exciting applications for gaming and identity, but zero-knowledge proof isn't always the end-all for privacy. It's like you are going for a meal. Zero-knowledge proof is presented as the only utensil you might need to eat your entire meal, but I don't think that's true. Solomon earned her master's degree in mathematics and theoretical computer science from the University of Oxford.
The Sunscreen founder and CEO is a person.
Zero-knowledge proof can be expensive. Solomon said that many projects built with ZKPs expect users to have more computing power than the average consumer would have at home. Sunscreen is a startup that wants to boost the development of FHE technology.
The user doesn't need these crazy machines that are potentially even server, and it's much more lightweight. Solomon said that you can still get privacy for different types of transactions, but you can get it for a reasonable cost.
Solomon was working at NuCypher when she first came up with the idea to bring FHE technology to market. Solomon was told to start a company around her idea.
Solomon is one of the three full-time employees at Sunscreen who have developed a compiler. Solomon said that the company launched a grants program that will allocate up to $500K to fund proposals from developers, academics and researchers that use FHE.
In order to fund these initiatives, Sunscreen just raised $4.75 million in a seed round led by Polychain Capital. Tux Pacific was one of the angel investors in the round. Solomon said the raise will make up for a pre-seed Sunscreen that was raised.
Solomon said that if FHE is so promising, then why isn't it more popular in web 3.
One of the reasons Sunscreen is building developer tools to simplify processes around it is because it is hard to write FHE programs.
In order for the tech to be useful in the privacy realm, Solomon thinks a new layer-oneBlockchain is needed, something she plans to work on with Sunscreen. Solomon said that with a new chain, technologists can build integrations between that chain and other protocols to hide the underlying data from users at a lower cost.
Solomon said that FHE is still considered a niche in the space.
Solomon said that he believed that fully Homomorphic Encryption just recently became efficient enough to make sense for use cases in the last 3 to 4 years. Zero-knowledge proof is a niche and lattice cryptography is even more so. It's just a small group of people who know how to combine different areas to solve problems The space is growing but it is five years behind zero-knowledge proof.
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