zkTLS Technology: A New Solution to Break the Data Silos in Web3

Recently, while exploring new project directions, I came across an emerging tech stack - zkTLS. This is an innovative technology that combines Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) and Transport Layer Security (TLS), mainly applied in the on-chain virtual machine environment of the Web3 domain. It can verify the authenticity of off-chain HTTPS data without the need to trust a third party, including the reliability of the data source, data integrity, and timeliness. This cryptographic mechanism allows on-chain smart contracts to reliably access off-chain Web2 HTTPS resources, thus breaking down data silos.

Overview of TLS Protocol

To deeply understand the value of zkTLS, we first need to understand the TLS protocol. TLS is used to provide encryption, authentication, and data integrity in network communication, ensuring secure data transmission between the client and the server. HTTPS is essentially HTTP with the TLS protocol applied, ensuring the privacy and integrity of information transmission, and making the authenticity of the server verifiable.

The TLS protocol addresses the security issues of HTTP in the following ways:

1. Encrypted communication: Use symmetric encryption to protect data and prevent eavesdropping.
2. Identity verification: Verifying server identity through digital certificates to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.
3. Data Integrity: Use HMAC or AEAD to ensure that data has not been tampered with.

The HTTPS communication process based on TLS includes a handshake phase and a data transmission phase. In the handshake phase, the client and server negotiate security parameters and establish an encrypted session. Then in the data transmission phase, both parties use the session key for encrypted communication.

Data Access Challenges in Web3

Although TLS is widely used in Web2, it has caused confusion in Web3 application development. When on-chain smart contracts wish to access off-chain data, the on-chain virtual machine does not open the capability for external data calls due to data availability issues, in order to ensure the traceability of the data and the security of the consensus mechanism.

To address this issue, several oracle projects have emerged, such as Chainlink and Pyth. They break data silos by acting as a relay bridge between on-chain data and off-chain data. These oracles typically adopt a PoS consensus mechanism, making the cost of malicious behavior for relay nodes higher than the benefits, thereby economically ensuring the provision of accurate information on-chain.

Advantages of zkTLS

However, the data acquisition schemes based on oracles have issues of high costs and low efficiency. The zkTLS technology has emerged to address these problems. It introduces the ZKP zero-knowledge proof algorithm, allowing on-chain smart contracts to directly verify that the data provided by nodes indeed comes from a certain HTTPS resource and has not been tampered with, thus avoiding the high usage costs caused by consensus algorithms in traditional oracles.

The core idea of zkTLS is to use cryptography to protect against the high costs associated with traditional oracles based on consensus mechanisms. It achieves this by introducing ZKP, which calculates the data obtained from off-chain relay node requests for HTTPS resources, CA certificate verification information, temporal proofs, and data integrity proofs to generate a Proof. At the same time, it maintains the necessary verification information and algorithms on-chain, enabling smart contracts to verify the authenticity, timeliness, and source reliability of data without exposing key information.

Application Prospects of zkTLS

zkTLS technology reduces the cost of achieving availability for Web2 HTTPS resources, bringing new possibilities to multiple fields:

• Reduce the on-chain price acquisition cost of long-tail assets
• Use authoritative Web2 sites for on-chain KYC, optimize DID
• Improve the technical architecture design of Web3 games

In response to the potential impact of zkTLS, existing oracle projects such as Chainlink and Pyth are actively researching related directions, attempting to maintain a leading position in technological iteration. At the same time, new business models are also emerging, such as shifting from time-based billing to usage-based billing, and providing Compute as a service.

However, like most ZK projects, zkTLS faces the main challenge of how to reduce computational costs to make it commercially viable.

In product design, paying attention to the development trends of zkTLS and appropriately integrating this technology stack may lead to new breakthroughs in business innovation and technical architecture. As technology continues to evolve, zkTLS is expected to become an important bridge connecting the Web2 and Web3 worlds, opening up broader development space for decentralized applications.