# What is ZK-Provenance?

ZK-Provenance is a **decentralized document verification and attestation protocol** built on Solana. It uses Zero-Knowledge cryptography to let anyone prove the authenticity of a document without revealing its contents.

## The Problem

Verifying documents today forces a painful tradeoff:

| Approach           | Privacy         | Verifiability  |
| ------------------ | --------------- | -------------- |
| Share raw document | ❌ Violated      | ✅ Verified     |
| Hide document      | ✅ Protected     | ❌ Unverifiable |
| **ZK-Provenance**  | ✅ **Protected** | ✅ **Verified** |

A hospital proving HIPAA compliance must share patient records. A company proving GDPR adherence must expose user data. A job applicant must share their entire salary history.

**This is a design failure — not a technical limitation.**

## The Solution

ZK-Provenance eliminates this tradeoff using **Groth16 Zero-Knowledge proofs**:

1. Your document is hashed locally using **Poseidon-128** — it never leaves your device
2. A ZK circuit proves your document is valid and policy-compliant
3. A **288-byte proof** is submitted to Solana
4. Anyone can verify the proof in **<1ms** — without seeing your data

## Key Properties

### 🔐 Privacy by Default

Your original data never touches our servers. Only the cryptographic commitment (hash) is processed.

### ⛓ Permanently On-Chain

Every attestation is recorded on Solana — tamper-proof, permanent, and publicly verifiable.

### ⚡ Blazing Fast

Proof verification takes less than 1 millisecond via Solana's ZK syscall.

### 💸 Extremely Cheap

$0.0001 per attestation — 5,000x cheaper than traditional audit processes.

### 🌐 Multi-Framework

Prove compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, SOC2, ISO27001, and CCPA — simultaneously.

## Who Is It For?

* **Enterprises** proving regulatory compliance without exposing sensitive data
* **DeFi protocols** needing on-chain creditworthiness proofs
* **Developers** building privacy-preserving verification into their apps
* **Individuals** proving credentials without sharing full documents


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