Prove a number clears the bar without revealing it.
Often the other side doesn’t need your number. They need to know it clears a bar. Today the only way to show that is to hand over the number, or the document behind it, usually under an NDA, and hope it stays where you sent it.
I’m building a way to answer the question itself, for example “is your runway above 12 months?”, with a proof instead of the document. The other side checks the proof and learns that the answer is yes. The number never leaves you.
Where it might fit
- A vendor financial review: runway above 12 months, debt ratio under a covenant.
- A contract minimum: cyber insurance limits above what the contract requires.
- Need-to-know limits: a value clears a threshold, shared with a partner who may not see the value itself.
- A security review: a score or uptime figure above the buyer's bar.
How it works
You record your numbers once as a cryptographic fingerprint. When someone sets a bar, you send a small certificate showing the recorded number clears it. Checking the certificate reveals nothing else. It uses zero-knowledge proofs, but you don’t need to know how they work to use it, the same way you don’t need to know how HTTPS works to trust the padlock.
Where it stands
- It works end to end and is open source, with an HTTP API. One certificate can cover several answers.
- Proofs are about 3 MB and take a few seconds to make. Checking one takes about 12 milliseconds.
- No outside cryptographer has reviewed it yet.
- Today the owner records its own numbers. A proof is only as good as its input, so for most uses someone the other side trusts (an accountant, an auditor, the data's custodian) would need to sign them. That part isn't built.
- The cryptography is not on NSA's approved lists, so it can't run on classified systems as it stands.
What I’m asking for
A few written answers, kept unclassified and non-confidential. If you’ve been asked for a number you didn’t want to share, or had to ask for one, I’d like to hear:
- What numbers do you refuse to share, or get refused?
- What gets accepted instead today? An NDA, a summary letter, a sanitized version, or nothing?
- Who would need to sign off on the number before a verified “yes” was enough?
A sentence or two each is plenty. I’m not selling anything.