Metaplex (mplx) 
Recently, advancements in zero-knowledge technologies have made cryptography more accessible and practical for a wider audience. This shift, known as programmable cryptography, bridges the gap between complex mathematical designs and real-world implementations, with significant implications for security and privacy.
At its core, cryptography involves sending private messages securely between entities, ensuring that only the intended recipients can understand the messages and that they remain unaltered during transmission. Digital signatures, for example, provide authentication and integrity for communication over insecure channels.
Today, advanced cryptographic systems like zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), multi-party computation (MPC), and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) protect online data during storage, transmission, and computation. Each system addresses specific needs, such as ensuring privacy in collaborative computations or enabling verifiable computation in single-party contexts.
One significant challenge in implementing advanced cryptographic systems is their complexity, limiting their widespread application. Cryptographers must carefully plan security assumptions, primitive choices, and performance optimization to make these systems work effectively in the real world.
Programmable cryptography offers a solution by incorporating circuit-based functional descriptions to make cryptosystems more adaptable and flexible. By using circuit descriptions, cryptosystems can emulate a Turing machine and handle general-purpose computational problems.
Researchers at 0xPARC and Privacy and Scaling Explorations have made strides in programmable cryptography by enabling zkSNARKs to be programmable. This innovation allows for confidential verification of identity claims and the calculation of credit scores without exposing sensitive information.
Programmable cryptography offers several benefits, including increased flexibility in practical applications and accessibility to a broader developer community. While the research has primarily focused on zkSNARKs, future breakthroughs in MPC or homomorphic encryption could lead to more programmable elements in cryptography.
As our online presence grows, the need to protect and authenticate our data becomes more critical. Programmable cryptography has the potential to revolutionize modern encryption, making it more accessible and open to further development.
