Whether we’re talking about stablecoins, agentic AI, or open finance, the promise of technological innovation in financial services rests on assumptions about privacy, transparency, and identity. These seem like details but they are what enable the digitalization of finance. And the record so far has been mixed.
Enter zero-knowledge proofs, a cryptographic technique that has a lot of promise for digital finance. It first emerged in the world of crypto and Web3, and remains central to tokenization and DeFi. But its potential application extends far beyond anything blockchain. It could in fact prove to be a crucial tool to help enable agentic AI, safely. But it could also become a new risk vector, and ZK Proofs face plenty of obstacles to adoption.
Alex Scheer is founder and CEO of zkMe, a startup that uses ZKPs to help businesses and users verify identify and asset ownership, and promotes ZKPs as the universal identity protocol for onchain compliance, risk management, and underwriting. Raised and educated in Germany, he now lives in Hong Kong.
Timecodes
0:00 - Alex Scheer and zkMe
2:30 - Privacy versus transparency, identity, and how these can help guard against deepfakes and other security risks in digital finance
4:46 - The relevance of Web3/crypto technologies in the broader world of finance and AI
6:01 - What are zero-knowledge proofs? Alex explains this tech in terms of trust, and real-world examples of ZKP in the business world
10:29 - How do we know we can trust AI agents? Alex’s different take on KYA - “know your agent” – and the lack of protection for identity in the marketplace
17:09 - ZKP adoption challenges; how ZKPs integrate (or not) with existing systems and vendors in compliance and risk management
19:36 - What’s the likelihood that ZK proofs or ZKP providers become a new node of vulnerability?
21:11 - ZKP’s potential in fostering open-finance models, and the concept of data “reusability” and making it self-sovereign
26:40 - But '“self-sovereignty” has never taken off…is this time different?
28:57 - What has to happen to get banks, regulators, and fintechs want to support the use of ZKPs? Alex’s top business opportunities.
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