Computer Scientist Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty | WIRED
Why Hacker News recommends it
It is the go-to accessible explanation of zero-knowledge proofs, linked whenever a thread needs an intuitive introduction.
What it is
WIRED has UCLA professor Amit Sahai explain zero-knowledge proofs to a child, a teen, a college student, a grad student and an expert. Each round goes deeper into the cryptography and why it matters.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2022 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec jimmySixDOF · 2022-05 · on “Zero knowledge proofs in RISC-V”
This is the best explanation I have seen [1] : "Computer scientist Amit Sahai, PhD, is asked to explain the concept of zero-knowledge proofs to 5 different people; a child, a teen, a college student, a grad student, and an expert." [1] [this video]
Strong rec mohsen1 · 2026-07 · on “Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance”
Computer Scientist Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficult [this video] This video is very beautifully explains it
Recommends abhv · 2025-07 · on “Opening up ‘Zero-Knowledge Proof’ technology”
My colleague Amit made a simple video explanation about zkp with Wired. [this video] That doesn't explain the way this scheme works, but it's a nice start.
Cites ricochet11 · 2022-01 · on “Why should you care about Ethereum Layer-2?”
agree, ZKProofs are really interesting and i'm sure they will come to be used across lots of areas of the web and not just blockchain, though their use and development is most active in the blockchain space for how useful they are for privacy+scalability. Proving knowledge without revealing information allows us to prove computations (validating them is a lot quicker than repeating the computation) and "use things" without sacrificing privacy. You can combine the two and have private transactions which are then rolled up in a computation, and then post the proof of the computation to mainnet. You get both cheap and private transactions and infra on top of the base chain. But this goes beyond
Cites jimmySixDOF · 2022-09 · on “How to explain zero-knowledge protocols to your children (1998) [pdf]”
On YouTube (23 min) Computer scientist Amit Sahai, PhD, is asked to explain the concept of zero-knowledge proofs to 5 different people; a child, a teen, a college student, a grad student, and an expert. Using a variety of techniques, Amit breaks down what zero-knowledge proofs are and why it's so exciting in the world of cryptography. Amit Sahai, PhD, is a professor of computer science at UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. From S1 E16 of Computer Scientist Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty | WIRED [this video]
Cites ghywertelling · 2026-03 · on “We should revisit literate programming in the agent era”
> With agents, does it become practical to have large codebases that can be read like a narrative, whose prose is kept in sync with changes to the code by tireless machines? I think this is true. Your point supports it. If either the explanation / intention or the code changes, the other can be brought into sync. Beautiful post. I always hated the fact that research papers don't read like novels, eg "ohk, we tried this which was unsuccessful but then we found another adjacent approach and it helped." Computer Scientist Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty | WIRED [this video] Computer scientist Amit Sahai, PhD, is asked to explain the concept of zero-knowledge proofs to 5 different peop