OPRFs (Oblivious Pseudorandom Functions) are such an underrated cryptographic primitive. They are insanely efficient. One prime use case (paper below), presented yesterday at PET-CON by some of my former colleagues, is privacy preserving delegated authentication. Think “sign in with your favorite Big Tech provider.” Today, a lot of data flows between the service provider and the identity provider that is not technically needed for authentication. With OPRFs, you can cut out that leakage. Everyone in the room agreed this is a technically superior solution that should be deployed. But the real question was: how? Both the service provider and the identity provider have to agree. And right now, their incentives are around data sharing, not privacy. Regulation alone will not fix that (this path failed so far). What is really needed is a change in business models and incentives. That is why identity in Web3 looks different. Providers here are incentivized to adopt technically superior, privacy preserving solutions because it aligns with their mission how to build a sustainable protocol.