Alternatively, we could release a sensitive and proprietary program (such as a well-trained ML model)
and be guaranteed that the program can be used only a limited number of times, thus potentially preventing over-use, mission-creep, or reverse engineering. Such programs can also be viewed as a commitment to a potentially exponential number of values, with a guarantee that only few of these values are ever opened.
As it happens, this is exactly one of the proposed use-cases for “k-time programs” in cryptography: https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/658.pdf
(I don’t buy their polymer idea though.)
Very cool, thanks for the pointer!