Vitalik Buterin supports ZK ‘likes’ on Farcaster after X’s privacy change
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has expressed his support for X Engineer Haofei's announcement on decentralized social media platform Farcaster. Haofei X revealed that he would make “likes” private.
On May 20, Buterin took the idea even further, suggesting that Farcaster would like to fight zero-knowledge (ZK) election fraud – the misrepresentation of real elections due to social pressure or fear.
ZK technology is a privacy-preserving encryption method that allows one party to verify that a statement is true without revealing confidential information. When applied to likes, it confirms that someone anonymously liked a post.
Buterin proposed to borrow ZK technology from Zupol, a device used in a pop-up city concept, which Buterin inspired and named Zuzalu. Towards decentralization and encryption, Zoopol is used for anonymous voting and electoral decision-making.
Buterin's proposal to use ZK technology is consistent with the principles behind the Farcaster platform – user privacy, censorship resistance, autonomy and differentiation from centralized social media platforms.
In response to rumors that X may hide users' likes by default, Haofei confirmed that the platform makes likes private and explained the reasoning behind this.
“Public likes are encouraging the wrong behavior. For example, many people are discouraged from liking content that may be “scary” for fear of retaliation from trolls.”
Haofei continued, saying that users will soon be able to like posts “without worrying about who can see it.” It also reminded users that “the more you like, the better the algorithm will be for you.”
Community reactions to the news were mixed. Some users took the idea even further, saying, “Why stop at likes? Follows are the same.” While high-profile figures such as Wall Street Silver have opined to the contrary.
Related: White paper that gave birth to crypto ZK-proofs receives IEEE ‘Test of Time' award
Outside the field of ZK cryptography, Buterin has recently proposed solutions to mitigate the mining value (MEV) problem. With MEV strategies, validators can generate profits to capture otherwise unattainable arbitrage opportunities by arranging transactions within a block.
However, this practice will congest the network, increase merchant traffic requirements and increase gas bills. To combat this, Buterin reduced the MEV's minimization of quarantine techniques, the use of inclusion lists, and the requirements for running a node.
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