ZKPs are the foundation of a new AI era, says Billions Network’s CEO

ZKPs could underpin trustworthy AI and digital ID, says Billions Network’s CEO.

The technology of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) will underpin a new era of trustworthy artificial intelligence and digital identity, says Billions Network CEO Evin McMullen.

It will allow individuals and organisations to interact with platforms securely and transparently.

The problem

As AI agents proliferate, people are asked to hand over ever more biometric data to prove they are not bots.

If personal information leaks into the open, machines can exploit it—for instance to impersonate real people. That can undermine systems designed to filter out “non-human” users.

An arms race ensues: the more rigorous the checks, the higher the risk of data spilling onto the internet.

It is unacceptable to demand transparency from people while tolerating opacity from machines, McMullen argues. Both bots and online users need more effective ways to verify identity.

Hoovering up biometrics and building centralised registries is no solution, since such databases inevitably attract cybercriminals.

A trust deficit stymies progress

The absence of mechanisms to reliably verify the identity of artificial intelligence creates problems. So long as AI agents can pass as humans, manipulate markets or execute unauthorised transactions, enterprises will be slow to roll out autonomous systems at scale.

McMullen stressed that LLMs become more hazardous after fine-tuning—they are 22 times more likely to produce harmful or undesirable responses than the original “base” models.

Such fine-tuned systems are also easier to jailbreak, that is, to circumvent built-in safeguards.

If a service cannot tell who is calling it, any interaction with AI becomes a potential data-leak or misuse risk.

Legitimate AI systems need verifiable credentials to participate in the emerging “agent-to-agent” economy. If a trading bot transacts with another bot, both sides must be confident in the counterparty’s identity and system of accountability.

For people, the status quo is also flawed. Traditional identity checks often lead to mass data breaches, enable authoritarian surveillance and yield billions in corporate revenues from selling personal data with no compensation to the owners.

People do not want to share personal data, yet regulatory obligations force them to.

The solution

Zero-knowledge proofs could become the tool that lets both humans and AIs attest to their privileges without inviting abuse.

ZKPs let parties validate certain claims without revealing the underlying data. Examples:

• a user proves they are over 21 without disclosing a date of birth;
• an AI demonstrates it was trained on an ethical dataset without revealing proprietary algorithms;
• a financial institution ensures a client meets regulatory requirements without storing personal information.

“ZKPs can change the game completely, allowing us to prove who we are without handing over confidential data. But adoption is still slow,” McMullen stressed.

The technology remains niche, sits in a regulatory grey zone and is little known to the wider public. Companies that profit from collecting personal data are not keen to integrate ZKPs.

Even so, more agile identity players are beginning to adopt zero-knowledge techniques, McMullen noted.

“As regulatory standards emerge and awareness grows, ZKPs could become the foundation of a new era of trustworthy AI and digital identity. The technology will allow individuals and organisations to interact with platforms securely and transparently,” the expert added.

Implications

Generative AI could add trillions of dollars to the world economy each year, yet much of that potential goes unrealised because of identity-verification hurdles:

• institutional investors require robust KYC/AML compliance before allocating capital to AI-driven strategies;
• enterprises insist on agent identity before granting autonomous systems access to critical infrastructure;
• regulators need accountability mechanisms before approving AI in sensitive domains.

“ZKP-based identity systems meet all of the above requirements while preserving privacy and autonomy,” McMullen noted.

The technology could also help tackle the rise of deepfakes. Every piece of content could be linked to a verified creator without exposing their identity.

In July, China’s digital identity cards went live.