Stateful ZK Identity with Ian Miers

In this episode, Anna Rose and Nico Mohnblatt welcome back Ian Miers, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, to continue the conversation from a previous episode and dig deeper into his latest work like zk-Promises, zk-Cookies, and Cryptographic Personas. These ZK tools aim to build social networks that protect user privacy while maintaining integrity, like anonymous moderation and reputation systems without central databases. Ian explains how they differ from traditional creds but share ideas around proving attributes securely. The conversation explores real-world applications, such as banning bad actors without de-anonymizing them, setting rules in private group chats, and creating self-sovereign identities that persist over time. Ian also touches on challenges like stolen accounts, trolling, age checks, and how these primitives could shape future online interactions. Related Links

• Ian Miers: Academic profile and publications
• zk-creds: Flexible Anonymous Credentials from zkSNARKs and Existing Identity Infrastructure
• zk-promises: Anonymous Moderation, Reputation, and Blocking from Anonymous Credentials with Callbacks
• zk-Cookies: Continuous Anonymous Authentication for the Web
• Cryptographic Personas: Responsible Pseudonyms Without De-Anonymization
• Zexe: Enabling Decentralized Private Computation
• Zerocoin to zk-creds: Modern ZK History with Ian Miers

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