The Bridge Between Web3 and Web2: The Potential and Applications of zkTLS

Although Web3 technology has developed powerful tools and infrastructure, the daily lives of ordinary internet users still primarily take place in a Web2 environment. Despite significant advancements in the cryptocurrency space, such as the launch of Layer 2 scaling solutions, the emergence of zkVMs, and the approval of ETFs, most people still view blockchain as a distant concept rather than a tool for everyday use.

The fundamental reason for this situation is not the limitations of the technology itself, but rather that Web3 has not yet deeply touched our digital lives. Ordinary users are still browsing, trading, and socializing on centralized platforms that control users' data. To achieve mainstream adoption, the key lies in connecting the Web2 and Web3 worlds in a trustless and privacy-protecting manner.

Barriers to Web3 Breakthrough

Most of our daily online interactions take place in tightly controlled ecosystems, such as banks, social media, streaming platforms, and government portals. This leads to two core issues:

1. Data Silos: Users' online identities are scattered across various platforms, each holding a part of the information about their lives.
2. Lack of Ownership: Users do not actually own their data; at most, they only have access rights, which can be revoked or restricted at any time.

These issues have resulted in many inconveniences in daily life, such as the need to provide complete bank statements to prove income or upload entire utility bills to verify addresses. The existing system assumes that complete transparency is the only way to establish trust, due to a lack of infrastructure for selective and verifiable disclosures.

zkTLS: The Key Technology Connecting Web2 and Web3

zkTLS (Zero-Knowledge Transport Layer Security Protocol) is an innovative technology that builds new features on top of the existing TLS protocol. It allows users to extract and prove specific facts from Web2 data streams without revealing the full content or relying on third parties.

The core advantages of zkTLS:

1. On-chain verifiability: the ability to prove that data comes from a specific Web2 source and has not been tampered with.
2. Selective Disclosure: It allows proving specific attributes without exposing the complete data.

Working principle:

• Capture the encrypted TLS session between the user and the website.
• Generate zero-knowledge proofs to demonstrate the authenticity of specific statements.
• Verify the proof on the chain without trusting intermediaries and protect privacy.

Practical Applications of zkTLS

Financial Services

zkTLS makes it possible to verify income, cash flow, or account history without exposing sensitive information. For example:

• The peer-to-pool credit agreement can provide unsecured credit limits for traders, farmers, and businesses.
• The flexible peer-to-peer lending market allows borrowers to privately prove their income or account activity.
• RWA tokenization projects can verify asset ownership through government portals.
• Decentralized fiat to cryptocurrency gateway, proof of payment without KYC.

Consumer Platform

zkTLS makes digital goods, subscriptions, and purchase history portable and verifiable:

• Verification of ownership for game skins and collectibles, enabling secure peer-to-peer transactions.
• Proving access to closed communities, subscriptions, or premium content.
• Proving past purchases or loyalty program activities in e-commerce.

Identity and Reputation

zkTLS allows selective disclosure of identity information from trusted sources:

• A privacy-preserving identity oracle that converts Web2 data into selective on-chain proofs.
• Cross-application reputation layer to verify credit scores, location, and other information.
• Trustworthy and verifiable work profiles based on employment history and social graphs.

Social and Content

zkTLS makes participation portable and programmable:

• Prove ad views or interactions while protecting user privacy.
• Verify game files and performance data to implement a cross-platform reward mechanism.

Influence and Behavior

zkTLS makes it possible to prove actions without monitoring.

• Verify the ownership and usage of solar panels.
• Link sports rewards to verified activities without disclosing health or location data.

Emerging Frontier

In the fields of artificial intelligence and decentralized coordination, zkTLS provides a critical trust infrastructure:

• Generate verifiable decision logs for autonomous agents.
• Allows reporters and experts to prove affiliation or insights without revealing their identity.
• Verify the training data for machine learning to ensure authenticity while protecting the privacy of contributors.

Future Outlook

zkTLS not only makes Web2 data available in Web3, but also allows for ownership. As more applications adopt zkTLS, we will see:

• More verifiable data brings more powerful applications.
• Users gain greater control over their data.
• An ecosystem that expands through trust, privacy, and composability.

zkTLS provides the necessary infrastructure for encryption technology to enter the mainstream. It realizes encrypted trust of Web2 data, privacy-protecting verification, user-controlled composable identity layers, and new types of applications based on verifiable real-world interactions. This is not just a new protocol; it is a completely new way of thinking about how information flows between platforms and how trust is established on the internet.