Privacy protocols as non-rivalrous public goods

Usually a lurker but something’s been stuck in my mind, and I wanted to share. I've been pondering over the idea of privacy protocols as non-rivalrous public goods. For those unfamiliar, non-rivalrous goods can be used by multiple people without degrading the quality of the good - in this case, privacy protocols. These protocols, if implemented correctly, can benefit everyone in the ecosystem without diminishing their effectiveness.

I got the idea after reading about Namada, which I found through a Delphi Digital piece. But before we delve into that, it's crucial to highlight the importance of privacy as a public good and how funding plays a role in its development.

Public good funding is always a hard sell. If you think about it, privacy, much like clean air, benefits everyone in a community. However, since these benefits are shared among all users, it can be challenging to incentivize individual contributions. This often leads to underfunding, a dilemma known as the "free-rider problem".

Namada's application of ZKP in cross-chain transactions could be a step towards solving this problem. By enabling privacy across multiple chains, they might boost the entire multichain ecosystem and pave the way for more innovative use cases.

Keen to hear more thoughts on this. Do you see privacy protocols as non-rivalrous public goods?