Project Title
ZARVAN: An Information Exchange
Description
ZARVAN is a platform designed to address the buyer’s inspection paradox, a major barrier to the creation of liquid information markets. By leveraging cryptography, smart contracts, fair data exchange protocols, trusted execution environments (TEEs), LLMs, and advanced mechanism design, ZARVAN facilitates secure and equitable transactions of information, enabling buyers and sellers to reach equilibrium.
Manifesto/Vision
Our vision is to create a successful general information market by reducing the friction and risk inherent in information exchange. By empowering individuals and organizations to securely trade valuable data, ZARVAN aims to unlock untapped economic potential of information markets.
Problem
Information markets suffer from the buyer’s inspection paradox, where buyers cannot assess the value of information before purchase, while sellers fear expropriation if they reveal it. This imbalance leads to market collapse, stifling the trade of valuable information.
Solution
ZARVAN hopes to allow for information market equilibrium through:
Proof of Organization: Verifiable claims of organizational membership via cryptographic proofs of domain membership (ZKPs on DKIMs) using the core primitives developed by zkEmail.
Atomic Fair Data Exchange: Secure on-chain mechanisms ensuring fairness for buyers and sellers.
TEE-Secured Amnesic Oracles: Privacy-preserving AI agents that facilitate negotiations without leaking sensitive data.
Product Features
Sealed Bid Auctions: Dynamic pricing mechanisms to balance risk and reward.
Partial Disclosure Options: Seller-defined information previews to entice buyers.
Reputation System: Incentivizes honest participation and builds trust over time.
Confidential Computing: End-to-end encryption and TEE integration for secure data handling.
Validation
ZARVAN builds on proven technologies, including zkEmail’s Proof of Organization SDK, atomic fair data exchange protocols, and TEE-enabled LLMs. The system’s components are designed for scalability and robustness, ensuring real-world applicability.
Progress
Designed the core architecture for information markets.
Integrated cryptographic primitives and TEEs into the protocol design.
Exploring partnerships with zkEmail
Differentiation
Unlike existing platforms, ZARVAN combines multiple advanced mechanisms—proofs, TEEs, and reputation systems—into a single solution for information markets. This approach minimizes risks and maximizes usability, setting ZARVAN apart from competitors. Moreover, we quite frankly believe that our use case stands out from the crowd in terms of its general relevance. We are big supporters of the belief that crypto’s most important mission is to integrate with the real world. We believe our idea serves that use case. Additionally, we think our use of LLMs represents one of the few genuine and feasible applications of AI agents currently available.
Team
Myself. Upon sponsorship, I intend to put out feelers for people interested in participating/working who are knowledgeable in the core subject areas: LLMs, TEEs, Confidential Computing, Smart Contracts, etc.
Grant Request
$120,000
What the Funds Are For
Purchase of GPU to run TEE
Development and testing of the TEE-secured architecture.
Integration of cryptographic proofs and AI-driven amnesic oracles.
Outreach to establish early adopters and market validation.
Help Requested
Technical expertise in TEE deployment and confidential computing.
Partnerships with organizations for pilot use cases.
Feedback from the cryptography and AI communities.
Additional Resources, Links, Portfolio
The full v1 draft of our whitepaper is here. The full architecture is laid out here. We anticipate minor changes in architecture, but the core idea is there.