We are starting a space for Zero Knowledge (ZK) experts and organizations specializing in ZK with the goal to develop a ZK ecosystem on NEAR. This Community Group (CG) is also open to anyone who is just interested in ZK and its applications. It follows the format of other NEAR community groups and is a part of Developer Governance that was launched in Aug 2022. Developer Governance is modeled after Rust governance and engineering DAOs, and it combines the best of both worlds.
ZK is a cutting-edge technology which is still undergoing a research phase so no single ZK entity is sufficient to form the vision of ZK future on NEAR. Therefore, we would like a community to lead ZK ecosystem on NEAR. There are ZK projects that were developed for NEAR, see below, but NEAR ecosystem lacks a set of ZK components that projects can reuse and a general agreement on standards and vision.
Expectations and Goals
This CG has a free-format with basic moderation to facilitate the discussions. The goal is to generate proposals that are later discussed by the corresponding Work Group (WG). If Developer Governance DAO chooses to incentivize CG, the amount and quality of the proposals is how DAO members would measure ROI.
Proposed Initial Topics
We suggest to discuss the following topics during the first ZK CG meeting:
- ZK light client standard for NEAR;
- ZK components, primitives, libraries, etc that we wish we had on NEAR;
- Bootstrapping ZK ecosystem on NEAR.
Meeting Notes
- 2022-11-15 Notes | Video Recording
- 2022-12-03 Notes | Video Recording
- 2023-01-24 Notes | Video Recording
- 2023-03-16 Notes | Video Recording
Zero Knowledge Work Group
After the first few ZK CG meetings we will form a ZK Work Group. Unlike CG that has no format, WG will have a very strict process that we will use to review proposals, recommend the funding to DAO or NEAR grants program, and hold grant takers accountable.
Specifically, ZK WG will be elected from several most trusted CG participants and potentially some other known ecosystem experts. It will be launched after CG stabilizes and starts producing proposals.
Resources
Zero Knowledge Community Group 
Date: Tuesday, Nov 15, 4 PM UTC
Register: 
Some resources being shared in the chat/call