# Can zero-knowledge and blockchains help humanity survive? - Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon) - Date: 2025-10-07 - Duration: 07:16 - Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-EyjhtZX_kWE - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyjhtZX_kWE ## Description While someone is building one more NFT marketplace rn... I claim that blockchains, privacy, and verifiability can disrupt, heal, and modify the world around us for real: spacetech, agrotech, biotech, AI/ML, neurotech, and many other domains have a fit for our beloved technology. Based on dozens of interviews with ppl from other industries, I want to share the most unexpected, exciting, and urgent use cases e.g. satellite coordination, post-nuclear war recovery, and LLMs presumption of innocence ## Transcript next speaker who will talk about how their knowledge and blockchains will help help Humanity survive please welcome Lisa a [Music] sword hello everyone uh this is a lightning talk meaning we don't really have any time for jokes sorry for that we have to start very being very serious from the very begin beginning so the question I'm going to talk about today the problem is that we are very small like as a blockchain industry I mean on this picture you can see how the rest of the world uh is trying to see what is blockchain if you want some more specific numbers if we compare our industry to other Tech verticals like space Tech space Tech or biotech we are something like like 10 to 40 times smaller Frankly Speaking we are like a small dot but I think we need to be large if we want to our industry to prosper and take a meaningful place in the world and I think we need to learn from mushrooms how to be large what's it the difference between blockchain and mushrooms blockchain is a three mushroom Network and mushrooms are a three trillion mushroom Network Three trillion mushroom network is a really cool thing whenever someone sees it they want to jump in because if there are three trillion PE 3 trillion mushrooms who joined it seems to to be worth it but three mushroom Network seems to be a bit a doubtful activity so we need to become mushrooms that is to say it is on us the blockchain industry to find use cases where blockchain and ZK are a perfect fit for huge world's problem and furthermore it's on us to communicate it to right people in right Industries and in right countries around the world because I can guarantee you they will not figure it out on their own first because they don't think about blockchain then because they don't know about Z knowledge so today I'm going to just an as an example give you three real world use cases that are crucial for Humanity survival and I'm going to use the formula of ZK for refi computations and blockchain for coordination think for think for example about the space think for example about satellite coordination there are many countries operating in the space and many of them are not friends but still they have to coordinate their activity in the space how can China prove the US that their satellite won't clash into some us w space facility what they do today they ask you promise yes I promise but what if they use Ser knowledge proofs for proof of fruit or proof of hitting the specific coordinate instead of just promising but how should they coordinate these tons of zero knowledge proofs by hundreds of parties for thousands of satellites 24 to7 without disclosing any sensitive information they can use privacy preserving programable blockchain or think about agriculture in many countries agriculture is run by self-piloting machines like computers with software running on it if tractors cultivators and bailers are out of operation for the whole country its economy stops and the country is in deep economic crisis how can a small human Force thousands of machines with different programs running on top to report them what's on their mind using Z knowledge proofs but what about a network of thousands of machines and thousands humans transmitting zero knowledge proofs in arbitrary directions 24 to7 with privacy preserving programmable blockchain I think about nuclear missiles I know this is not the favorite topic for most people but just for 30 seconds if a country a has a concern that a country B launched a nuclear missile towards it his president has several minutes less than five to call their president and ask did you do it but and if the president didn't answer they must um launch their all their missiles as a prevention but can we prove that something has not happened can one prove that they have not launched the nuclear missile or if they did can they prove that this particular country is not a destination I don't have 100% answer for this one especially if we can prove that something has not happened but I think it might be doable and I think it's worth thinking about it so can zero knowledge help Humanity survive yes sure can blockchain help Humanity survive this is a bit trickier but yes but it must be privacy preserving programmable blockchain no privacy no blockchain adoption that's simple that's it thank you uh thank you uh for interesting talk um I also strong believer that blockchains and their Pro knowledge will help Humanity to reorganize in the future and thank you again so if we have any questions we have some time uh okay uh then let's uh try to uh kind of uh stay together because the next sliding talk will be started in 2 minutes thank you may I answer the fourth one yeah if you want yeah about proving to the partner that someone is not cheating um if you are a computer I think and she is a computer I think it is very easy um if one of you is not a computer it is tricky because when it comes to uh bridging data from the physical world uh into the digital world from my perspective this is this is very complex still very tricky thing and it wasn't uh resolved so far there was um a paper in 2013 um written by some Princeton Princeton guys about like utilizing zero knowledge proofs for monitoring the state of nuclear facility um and they assume that there is some nice solution to um like an a nice solution for a Oracle from physical world to the digital world but up to now there there is no such solution as far as I know and uh that's why all the cases I described they are digitally and Native from the very beginning so something exists like a piece of code from the very beginning like self-piloting machine or like satellite