The hyphen did not move, it is actually a different one. Zero-knowledge loses its hyphen when the phrase is compressed into an acronym, and a hyphen is added as a separator.
Indeed, but this remains a nominal explanation. It validates the possibility of one hyphen placement but does not explain why any of the equally available alternatives are not chosen. Why not ZK-S-N-ARK, and other combinations besides? Heck, what kind of diseased mind thinks hyphens even belong in initialisms and acronyms? Don’t even get me started on the use of arbitary case variants (“zk-SNARK”).
My thesis being, justifying any one particular placement of a hyphen is a necessary but not sufficient part of an adequate explanation. Just as Alice was vexed by Humpty Dumpty.
If you expand ZK-S-N-ARK it becomes Zero Knowledge-Secure-Noninteractive-Argument of Knowledge, or Zero-Knowledge-Secure-Non-interactive-Argument of Knowledge if you reinsert the hyphens that had been removed by the acronym compression process. To me it seems that binding those words together with hyphens makes the name harder to understand. What exactly is meant by Knowledge-Secure-Noninteractive-Argument? Surely a lunatic must have pasted all of those words together. The phrase doesn't just change its meaning but loses it because some of the words were not glued on with hyphens and fell off.
In other words, my point is that arbitrary and gratuitous hyphens can make it more difficult to understand what ZK-SNARK means. The only system of hyphenation needed is the one that causes people to parse the meaning in the way that the writer intended.
However it is still merely necessary, and not sufficient. When you enumerate the entire set of letter combinations and hyphen positions and assign “lunatic ratings” to each variant, you’ll find many that aren’t so preposterous. Ergo, the chosen form is merely a nominal preference.
This is what my objection really is. At best, the non-preposterous combinations will mean the same thing as the original. Most combinations will carry a different meaning or none at all. There's no reason to treat it like a search space to test all of the possible arrangements, because there is no additional meaning to uncover that way.
