Totally see that perspective. Early zero-knowledge proof systems faced some pretty fundamental challenges that held back adoption.

The first hurdle was obvious—proof generation just cost too much. The computational overhead made it impractical for many real-world applications. Doing ZK proofs meant burning serious resources.

But there's something deeper too. Beyond the crypto space, the value proposition wasn't crystal clear. Why would mainstream apps or enterprises actually need zero-knowledge proofs? What problem does it really solve for them? That product-market fit question was wide open.

Then things started shifting. SNARKs showed up and made some improvements. STARKs came along next. Gradually the heavy lifting part—that expensive proof generation—started becoming more manageable. The math got better, the implementations got smarter.

It's the kind of tech that needed both the performance breakthroughs and the killer use cases to finally click into place.