Recent developments in cryptography and potential long-term consequences

Abstract

This document discusses several recent developments in cryptography, including public-key encryption, digital signatures, cryptographic hash functions, trusted timestamping, tamper-evident logs, blockchains, cryptocurrencies, zero-knowledge proofs, zk-SNARKs, smart property, smart contracts, and fully homomorphic encryption. The document then discusses potential long-term consequences of these developments, including that information channels used for surveillance could go dark, that it could become more difficult to forge convincing photographs and videos, that reliance on banks, courts, and other institutions could diminish, that borders could become less significant, that it could become possible to solve coordination problems that existing institutions cannot, that privacy-preserving online services and surveillance could become more feasible, that privacy-preserving agreement verification could become more feasible, and that new, decentralized political entities could emerge. The document also discusses the relationship between these potential consequences and the potential consequences of progress in artificial intelligence. Finally, the document discusses several limitations that could prevent recent developments in cryptography from achieving great significance. – AI-generated abstract