Throughout the entire process, he said something to me that I thought was quite accurate: buying a house is like showing everyone your underwear. He was not exaggerating. When you go to the bank for a transaction verification, they see every transaction you've made in the past three years. When you look for a loan intermediary, they require your credit report, which contains all your debt situations, credit card limits, and historical repayment records. When you seek a lawyer for asset verification, the lawyer asks for your deposit proof, investment account screenshots, and may even inquire whether the source of the money is compliant. At every stage, there is a new institution examining your financial data. Then these data remain in their systems. The intermediary company's database, the bank's risk control files, and the law firm's case records. If at any point there is a data leak, your asset status, debt structure, and income sources could be exposed. This is not a hypothesis; it has actually happened. A large domestic intermediary platform experienced a client data breach a few years ago, where home buyers' contact information, budget ranges, and purchase intentions were all packaged and sold on the black market. During that time, people who had purchased homes suddenly began receiving various harassing phone calls, and some were even targeted by scammers due to leaked asset information.
What is the problem? The problem is that in buying a house, you must prove to many institutions that you have enough money, but the current way to "prove you have money" is only one — to hand over all your financial data for others to see. You have no other choice.@MidnightNetwork In the white paper, there is a use case called asset tokenization, and the first scenario that popped into my head while reading it was buying a house. The logic is as follows: with zero-knowledge proofs, you can prove to the bank that "my assets are sufficient to pay the down payment and repay the loan" without needing to tell the bank how much money you have in total, where your money is, or whether you have other investments. The conclusion that the bank needs is verified, but the details required to verify that conclusion never leave your own machine. It sounds quite technical, but when translated into real-life scenarios, it is easy to understand: when you apply for a loan at the bank, the bank needs to know whether you can repay the money, which is a reasonable demand. But the bank does not need to know how many stocks your wife has at which brokerage, how much savings your parents have, or whether you have overseas assets. This information has no direct relation to the question of "can you repay the loan", but in the current process, you have to hand it all over because the bank's review is a full data review, not a conclusion verification. If $NIGHT this system can really be put into operation, in the future, when you apply for a loan, you only need to submit a zero-knowledge proof to show that you meet the repayment conditions. The bank verifies it and approves the loan. Throughout the process, the bank only receives one conclusion; your financial details never leave your own account system. Data leakage? If leaked, it is useless because there is no complete financial data in the bank's system. This is not just a privacy issue; it is a hidden cost that you may not have realized you have always been paying. You think the loan approval is the bank "helping" you, but throughout the process, you exchanged your financial data for services, and you do not know how that data is used afterward, how long it is stored, or whether it has been reused; you have no control over it. Of course, I know better than anyone how difficult it is to implement this in reality. Financial supervision, credit systems, anti-money laundering reviews — these are all real constraints that cannot be bypassed by just writing a white paper. But directionally, I think this matter is worth serious consideration: why must "proving your qualifications" and "taking off all your clothes for others to see" be the same thing? This "must" only exists because there are no other options technically at present, not because it should inherently be this way.#night Trying to provide another option. Whether it can really be implemented requires time, needs to align with the regulatory framework, and needs enough institutions to be willing to adopt this verification method. But when my friend submitted his materials while buying a house, he said to me at that moment: "It feels like I have submitted a loyalty oath." This feeling should not exist in the first place.@MidnightNetwork