ZCube: A Zero-Trust, Zero-Knowledge, and Zero-Memory Platform for Privacy and yet Secured Access

As concerns over privacy and trust escalate among individuals and corporations, traditional memory-based trust systems are increasingly seen as inadequate and undesirable. The rise of microservice architecture complicates this by making data paths harder to track. Given these concerns, the critical question arises: How can we establish trust or verify an entity’s credibility without collecting private information or relying on comparisons with pre-existing data, while knowing the exact data path of each request? To address this challenge, we introduce a lightweight, scalable, ZCube platform that employs nested Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), eliminating reliance on memory or evaluations based on past actions. This platform verifies and maintains trust in real-time without centralizing trust in any specific part of the system. It anticipates intentions and rigorously monitors them, ensuring operational integrity while preserving privacy. Distinctive for its ZKP trustless setup incorporating blockchain, each request begins anew and is rigorously monitored bidirectionally during execution. Our tests on the realistic example of a microservice-based distributed system, OpenTelemetry Demo, confirm that our novel approach— combining proof segmentation with plan adherence— exhibits fast response times of less than 200ms on average for most test cases. This ZCube platform surpasses traditional methods in efficiency and security. Our analysis shows comprehensive security and enhanced performance while effectively maintaining bidirectional trustlessness.