Think of zk proofs as an extension of asymmetric cryptography to arbitrary logic.
A zkVM makes encoding the arbitrary logic as easy as writing a normal Rust program.
A proof is a probabilistic statement that a specific program run with some public inputs and maybe some private inputs was executed correctly.
For crypto zk proofs are mostly for their succinctness property, not for privacy.
Outside of crypto privacy is the more important property, let's say a government issues a signed document, I could prove any arbitrary statement about that document without revealing the document. We could use zk proofs for anything we use canonical documents for today and we would gain privacy. Will we do this, probably not, but it would be an improvement.
A zkVM makes encoding the arbitrary logic as easy as writing a normal Rust program. A proof is a probabilistic statement that a specific program run with some public inputs and maybe some private inputs was executed correctly.
For crypto zk proofs are mostly for their succinctness property, not for privacy.
Outside of crypto privacy is the more important property, let's say a government issues a signed document, I could prove any arbitrary statement about that document without revealing the document. We could use zk proofs for anything we use canonical documents for today and we would gain privacy. Will we do this, probably not, but it would be an improvement.