May 20, 2026 · Cryptography · Product
Why we ship products from cryptography papers
There is a long gap between a zero-knowledge paper and something a person can click. Notes on how we close it.
There’s a long gap between a cryptography paper and something a person can click.
Most teams stop at one end. Labs publish the proof and move on. Dev shops ship the app but never read the paper. The work I care about is in the middle: taking a construction that exists only as math and turning it into a product with a button.
Read the paper. Then cut it down.
A paper optimizes for generality and rigor. A product optimizes for one user doing one thing. So the first job is subtraction: find the single claim worth proving, drop the rest, and design the flow around the proof, not the other way around.
The proof is the easy part
The hard part is everything around it: latency, key management, what happens when a proof fails, and how you explain “zero-knowledge” to someone who just wants to log in. That’s product work, and it’s where most ZK projects quietly fall apart.
We ship anyway, then fix what breaks in the open. Don’t trust me. Verify the math.