zkTLS Technology: A New Solution to Break Web3 Data Silos

Recently, while exploring new project directions, I came across an emerging technology stack—zkTLS. After in-depth research, I have整理了一些学习心得，希望与大家分享。

zkTLS is an innovative technology that combines zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) and TLS (Transport Layer Security Protocol). In the Web3 domain, it is primarily used in on-chain virtual machine environments to verify the authenticity of off-chain HTTPS data without relying on third parties. This authenticity includes three aspects: the reliability of the data source, the integrity of the data, and timeliness. Through this cryptographic mechanism, smart contracts gain the ability to access off-chain Web2 HTTPS resources reliably, effectively breaking data silos.

Introduction to TLS Protocol

TLS (Transport Layer Security) provides encryption, authentication, and data integrity protection in network communications, ensuring secure data transmission between clients and servers. HTTPS is essentially secure communication implemented on top of HTTP using the TLS protocol.

The TLS protocol primarily addresses the following issues:

1. Prevent information from being monitored by third parties through encrypted communication.
2. Verify the authenticity of the server side to prevent requests from being hijacked by malicious nodes.
3. Ensure the integrity of the returned information to avoid data loss.

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

The Data Access Dilemma in Web3

Although the TLS protocol is widely used in Web2 networks, it poses challenges for Web3 application development. On-chain smart contracts cannot directly access off-chain data, as this may affect the traceability of the data and the security of the consensus mechanism.

To address this issue, a series of oracle projects have emerged, such as Chainlink and Pyth. These projects act as a relay bridge between on-chain data and off-chain data, ensuring data availability through the PoS consensus mechanism. However, this solution has problems of high costs and low efficiency.

Innovations of zkTLS

The zkTLS technology has emerged to address the limitations of traditional oracle solutions. By introducing zero-knowledge proof algorithms, it allows on-chain smart contracts to directly verify whether the data provided by nodes comes from specific HTTPS resources and has not been tampered with, thereby avoiding the high costs associated with consensus algorithms in traditional oracles.

Specifically, zkTLS provides cryptographic protection to generate proofs for the data obtained from HTTPS resource requests, CA certificate verification information, temporal proofs, and data integrity proofs for off-chain relay nodes. At the same time, it maintains the necessary verification information and algorithms on-chain, allowing smart contracts to verify the authenticity, timeliness, and reliability of the data without exposing key information.

Potential Applications of zkTLS

zkTLS technology significantly lowers 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
• Utilize authoritative Web2 websites for on-chain KYC, optimizing the DID solution.
• Improve the technical architecture design of Web3 games

In the face of the challenges posed by zkTLS, traditional oracle projects such as Chainlink and Pyth are also actively researching related technologies and exploring new business models, such as usage-based fees and Compute as a Service.

Conclusion

zkTLS technology brings new possibilities to the Web3 world and is expected to open new directions in business innovation and technology architecture. When designing products, paying attention to the development dynamics of zkTLS and appropriately integrating this technology stack may lead to unexpected breakthroughs.