Goldwasser, Micali, Rackoff, “The Knowledge Complexity of Interactive Proof-Systems” (extended abstract), STOC ‘85, pp. 291–304.
Fiat, Shamir, “How to Prove Yourself: Practical Solutions to Identification and Signature Problems,” CRYPTO ‘86, pp. 186–194.
Schnorr, “Efficient Signature Generation by Smart Cards,” Journal of Cryptology 4(3), 1991, pp. 161–174.
Pedersen, “Non-Interactive and Information-Theoretic Secure Verifiable Secret Sharing,” CRYPTO ‘91, LNCS vol. 576, pp. 129–140 — the paper this whole site is about.
Cramer, Gennaro, Schoenmakers, “A Secure and Optimally Efficient Multi-Authority Election Scheme,” EUROCRYPT ‘97.
Noether, “Ring Confidential Transactions,” IACR ePrint 2015/1098.
Groth, “On the Size of Pairing-Based Non-interactive Arguments,” EUROCRYPT 2016 (IACR ePrint 2016/260).
Bünz, Bootle, Boneh, Poelstra, Wuille, Maxwell, “Bulletproofs: Short Proofs for Confidential Transactions and More,” IEEE S&P 2018, pp. 315–334.
Ben-Sasson, Bentov, Horesh, Riabzev, “Scalable, Transparent, and Post-Quantum Secure Computational Integrity,” IACR ePrint 2018/046.

See History for how these fit together chronologically, and Applications for how several of them get used in practice.

Courses and textbooks

Dan Boneh and Victor Shoup, A Graduate Course in Applied Cryptography — a free, complete graduate-level textbook, including chapters on zero-knowledge proofs and discrete-log-based protocols. The best next step if you want the full mathematical treatment.
Dan Boneh, Cryptography I (Stanford, on Coursera) — the standard first course in cryptography; covers the discrete-log and public-key foundations this site assumes.

Communities and applied resources

ZK Hack — puzzles, workshops, and the “ZK Whiteboard Sessions” video series, aimed at builders who want to go from “I understand the idea” to “I can implement this.”
a16z crypto’s Zero Knowledge Canon — a large, actively maintained, annotated reading list covering the field from the 1985 GMR paper through modern SNARK/STARK constructions, organized by topic and chronology.

Corrections and additions welcome — see About for how to propose a change to this page or anything else on the site.