The opposition party in the state of Georgia recently waved when it promised to introduce a national voting system based on blockchain. If implemented, the program would use zero-knowledge (ZK) technology – which allows blockchain networks to verify that information is true without revealing the information itself – to confirm voters’ identities and record their anonymous votes.

The party went down in a controversial defeat, but its promise is indicative of a growing wave of blockchain adoption by governments and large institutions around the world. From El Salvador to the United States, national authorities are increasingly trying to incorporate blockchains into the basic functioning of society.

ZK technology could change the way we protect our sensitive information online. Imagine being able to prove your age at a bar without having to show your ID, verify your eligibility for a loan without revealing your exact salary, or vote in an election without leaving any record of your identity with your choice. ZK technology makes it all possible. But to succeed, it needs to be as easy as using your phone to pay for a coffee.

The first big introduction of ZK could be make-or-break. A successful debut could pave the way for its adoption in fields ranging from finance to social media to public administration. But if the experience is subpar — if users encounter slowdowns, technical glitches or privacy issues — the public could quickly write the technology off entirely.

Blockchain developers and entrepreneurs need to be clear about what needs to happen for ZK technology to succeed with mainstream users. As a technology accelerator who has spent years working on this problem, I believe success depends on two critical components: user experience and scalability.

Blockchains must be invisible to users

The hard truth is that most people still think of blockchains as complex and esoteric – if they think about them at all. People working in cryptocurrencies often point to the benefits of transparency and immutability that are built into blockchain systems. And it’s true that many “eat their own dog food” and prefer the Brave browser to Chrome or Firefox.

But most people in the world prefer convenience and efficiency over other considerations. If we want blockchains to succeed, we need to offer a seamless experience that users expect, in addition to the benefits of decentralization.

A notable recent example is Polymarket, a decentralized betting market that rose to prominence in the run-up to the November election. People used it because it provided the service they wanted, not because of the underlying technology. Many didn’t even know about Polymarket’s crypto-native architecture.

Think about how you use your phone to pay for things today. The average user doesn’t want to think about private keys, gas fees, or cryptographic proofs. A voting system based on ZK should look and feel like any other mobile application. Users scan their ID, verify their identity with a quick biometric scan similar to Apple’s Face ID, and vote with a single tap. That’s all. The privacy technology and decentralized blockchain should work completely in the background.

Call it the Tesla Principle: The best way to get people to use something is to provide a better user experience. As a concept, it’s pretty simple. The trick, as always, is to execute.

Scaling ZK’s technology to handle millions of transactions—as a national election would require—remains a significant technical challenge. Today, ZK verification often requires considerable computing power, which makes it expensive and slow. Imagine standing in line to vote, scanning your ID, and then waiting 10 minutes for your vote to be processed.

It’s impractical and frustrating—exactly the kind of experience that would turn users against a blockchain voting system before it even gets off the ground. This is why current systems tend to have low security standards, such as requiring the first three letters of a person’s first and last name. Given the choice between security and speed, most people choose speed.

However, ZK can provide both.

Protect privacy without compromising usability

The basic function of ZK technology is to prove information without revealing it. In the context of voting, this means allowing citizens to verify their identity without revealing personal information that could compromise their anonymity. There are a number of technical pitfalls here that could compromise privacy if proof of identity is not implemented with security in mind.

One of the main problems is that many current applications require tailor-made designs for each specific application. This makes things unnecessarily complicated, like having many different track gauges instead of one standard. Elections, finance, social media – all can benefit from ZK technology, but none require a perfectly unique infrastructure. The more customizable ZK systems are, the more scalable they will be.

Generalized solutions enable efficient operation. This thesis has been proven in previous waves of technological development: For example, central processing units enabled the Internet to scale, while graphics processing units allow artificial intelligence agents to perform multiple fast calculations in parallel. The development of a universal ZK virtual machine (zkVM) that can handle a variety of use cases would be similarly transformative for blockchains.

ZkVM could simplify application voting, identity databases (such as driver’s licenses) and financial infrastructure to all run on the same infrastructure. This flexibility would greatly lower the barriers to adoption for enterprises and provide developers with a ready-made toolkit that could be used for a wide variety of applications.

It should come as no surprise that a number of talented teams are already hard at work addressing these challenges. The worldwide use of biometrics for identity verification has shown that ZK identity can be as easy as scanning a QR code. Semaphore – whose evidence is the basis of the world’s ecosystem – and the Rarimo protocol also do excellent work. All in all, the sum of the efforts of these groups and my particular area of ​​focus is to show the growing power of ZK proofs for secure, anonymous, user-friendly identity systems.

But technology alone is not enough. Success requires a relentless focus on user experience without compromising privacy and security. The next few years will be crucial as these systems move from experimental technology to mainstream applications. Those of us who build these solutions must remember that ultimate success will not be measured by technical achievements, but by whether we can make privacy as natural as paying with a tap on the phone.

Shumo Chu is one of the co-founders of NEBRA Labs. A former assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington and was a research fellow at Algorand. His current research interest is privacy protection systems.