If zk-proofs obfuscate transactions, why not centralize mining?

General
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Possibly naive question, apologies in advance if it’s answered somewhere already.

If zk proofs allow transaction obfuscation, why not centralize mining under a trusted authority (or perhaps federate it)? This is anathema to most cryptocurrency enthusiasts, but the privilege of simply determining the order of transactions, without any ability to know anything about them, seems like an extremely limited form of centralized authority (like a blind PayPal). But it would completely solve efficiency/scale issues and energy wasting, no more proof-of-work/stake, etc etc. Honest question… what are the risks? what are the tradeoffs?

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if it was centralized; government would become the trusted authority, and prolly kill-it.
if you want your alt network to have global reach it needs to be trustless. would also be terrible for distribution of rewards.

you are correct, tho
more fungible a currency is the more centralization it can handle. it’s just not ideal

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how could you insure data is intact if centralized?

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if centralized it would be easy of the government of the country to tax the company and zcash in general as well as shut it down in case they would like to