For Bhardwaj and other true believers, Dark Forest is testing several new concepts at once. First, he demonstrates how advanced cryptography can be used to add new features to online worlds. Dark Forest-inspired developers and geeks are already exploring new games and apps that take advantage of zero-knowledge proofs.

Gubsheep and others have even launched an R&D organization, called 0xPARC (a reference to PARC, the historic R&D company Xerox launched 40 years ago), to support this work. Bhardwaj recently did a stint as an intern for 0xPARC.

0xPARC’s reach is not limited to gaming. For example, one application that the group is interested in is digital identification. Remember the passport example. Zero-knowledge proofs could allow testing everything…