Zero Knowledge

We’re back with a new look and a new jingle! In this episode, ZK Podcast returns, and host Anna Rose shares a story from her past that strangely connects to the present day and the name "Zero Knowledge." Listen in as we kick off the show once again. Applications for zkSummit13 are now open, apply for your spot here. Check out the latest jobs in ZK at the ZK Podcast jobs board. Zero Knowledge Systems on Wikipedia IF YOU LIKE WHAT WE DO: Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree Subscribe to our podcast newsletter Follow us on X @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Catch us on YouTube ZK Podcast website

A quick update from the Zero Knowledge Podcast: The show is set to resume at the beginning of February, with exciting episodes and topics we can't wait to share with you! In the meantime, the team is hiring for two roles—a Community Marketing Manager to amplify the podcast's reach authentically and a Strategic Growth Lead to strengthen the business side of operations. If you are a potential candidate, please do apply over on the ZK Jobs Board!As 2025 approaches, the podcast aims to further explore zero-knowledge technology's potential to shape the future and invites the community to join in the journey.

SummaryThis week, Anna catches up with cohosts, Tarun, Nico and Guillermo to do a look back at the zk research and applications that came out in 2024. They go on to discuss the challenges facing the ecosystem. And they wrap with a brief look forward, covering what to expect in ZK in 2025. This will be the last ep of 2024, thank you for joining us this year! Further Reading:Circle STARKs by Haböck, Levit and PapiniStarkWare Unveils New 'Stwo' Cryptographic Prover That's 'Blazingly Fast'ZK12: WHIR: Reed-Solomon Proximity Testing with Super-Fast Verification by Eylon YogevEpisode 290: Exploring, Teaching and Auditing ZK with David Wong Episode 345: Latest ZK Research with Dan Boneh LatticeFold: A Lattice-based Folding Scheme and its Applications to Succinct Proof Systems by Dan Boneh and Binyi ChenLaBRADOR: Compact Proofs for R1CS from Module-SIS? by Ward Beullens and Gregor SeilerQuantum Algorithms for Lattice Problems by Yilei ChenEpisode 325: Web Proofs with Tracy from Pluto ZODA: Zero-Overhead Data Availabil

SummaryIn this week’s episode, Anna catches up with Dan Boneh, Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Stanford University. They discuss the focus of his research today, covering new ZK research problems and themes. This includes work on lattice-based SNARKs, ZK for content provenance, ZK in the FHE context, updates on ZK in ML and more!Here’s some additional links for this episode:0:03:08.3 Episode 256: New ZK Use Cases with Dan BonehEpisode 100: Dan Boneh on the past, present & future of cryptography0:03:44.6 Episode 341: coSNARKs with Ais and Lukas from TACEO0:07:57.2 LaBRADOR: Compact Proofs for R1CS from Module-SIS? Ward Beullens and Gregor Seiler0:07:57.2 Bulletproofs: Short Proofs for Confidential Transactions and More by Bünz, Bootle, Boneh, Poelstra, Wuille, and Maxwell0:09:44.7 Greyhound: Fast Polynomial Commitments from Lattices by Nguyen and Seiler0:11:28.3 LatticeFold: A Lattice-based Folding Scheme and its Applications to Succinct Proof Systems Dan Boneh and Binyi Chen0:12:

Summary This week, Anna and Nico take a look back at some of the ZK Events produced in 2024 by the ZK Podcast, ZK Hack and other adjacent projects. Starting with the live ZK Jargon Decoder hosted in January and spanning the 10 months since, Anna and Nico share behind-the-scenes anecdotes, highlight key talks from the events and share some insight into how the programs for the zkSummit events are created. They wrapped with a summary of some of the themes in ZK that got them talking this year and are tracking going forward. Don’t forget, this is the last episode of ZK Podcast before we take a pause in weekly shows for the rest of 2024 - but don’t worry we will be back! Further Reading: ZK HACK IV - ZK Jargon Decoder Episode 309 - ZK Jargon Decoder with Nico Mohnblatt ZK Hack Montréal Under The Hood of zkID: - Nicolas Mohnblatt - Web3 Summit 2024 Berlin Panel Discussion w/ Anna Rose, Jim Posen, Nicolas Mohnblatt - Web3 Summit 2024 Berlin zkSummit Website zkSummit11 Playlist zkSummit12 Live Link Episo

SummaryThis week Anna chats with Mikerah Quintyne-Collins from HashCloak and Stoffel Labs. They discuss how Mikerah got her start in the crypto space and then dive into the work she did at ChainSafe and eventually at HashCloak. They cover Mikerah’s work on privacy preserving tech like ZK, TEE and MPC and learn about what drives her tweet game and the wisdom she has picked up over the years as a technical founder, driven by curiosity… and memes. Here’s some additional links for this episode:ZK Mesh@badcryptobitch Twitter03:24 Episode 40: Benedikt Bünz on Bulletproofs and Verifiable Delay Functions04:54 Ethereum Founder Vitalik talk 2017- What is Cryptoeconomics? 11:03 “I will quite literally drop out if we got $100k in ETH” Tweet by Mikerah 13:01 “I am being told I should brag more about co-inventing rollups” Tweet by Mikerah15:36 Building Scalable Decentralized Payment Systems by Adlerand Quintyne-CollinsCheck out the ZK Jobs Board for the latest jobs in ZK at jobsboard.zeroknowledge.fm Episode SponsorAleo is

Just sharing 2 updates: 1) the ZK Whiteboard sessions are BACK with a second season! These videos will be released every 2 weeks for the next 3 months on ZK Hack channels - See Season 1 videos here: https://zkhack.dev/whiteboard/ See Season 2 Module 1 here: https://zkhack.dev/whiteboard/s2m1/ 2) The Zero Knowledge Podcast (aka this show!) will take a pause on the weekly cadence of the show starting Oct 16th until the end of 2024. Expect last 2 episodes on Oct 9 and Oct 16 There may be some additional episodes released this year (but no plans yet) Keep an eye on our website and twitter for updates about the show (and soon an updated website!)

SummaryThis week Anna catches up with Zac Williamson & Ariel Gabizon from Aztec. They cover what each has been working on over the last year, Zac shared updates about the development of Aztec and the finalization of their underlying ZK system: MegaPlonk. Ariel discussed his latest research on IVC with his publications of the ProtoGalaxy and Stackproofs works and how properties of this systems brought him and Zac to start working together again. Here’s some additional links for this episode:Episode 273: History of Plonk, Noir, and the building of Aztec 3 Episode 274: SNARKs: A Trilogy with Ariel Gabizon5:51 * zkSummit: plookup: Speeding up the PLONK prover - Zac Williamson & Ariel Gabizon 10:49 * ProtoGalaxy: Efficient ProtoStar-style folding of multiple instances by Liam Eagen and Ariel Gabizon13:01 * HyperNova: Recursive arguments for customizable constraint systems by Kothapalli and Setty13:01 * ProtoStar: Generic Efficient Accumulation/Folding for Special Sound Protocols by Bünz and Chen27:24 * cq:

SummaryThis week Anna and Nico chat with Lukas Helminger and Ais Connolly from TACEO. They discuss Lukas & Ais’ early work in cryptography and privacy preserving technologies, the founding of TACEO and their recent work on coSNARKs - or Collaborative SNARKs - that combine MPC and ZK. They explore how these coSNARKs are created, their coCircom language, the characteristics of these systems as well as how they can be applied in the real world.Here’s some additional links for this episode:TACEO TACEO Docs TACEO GitHub Hashing it out: coSNARKs at TACEO Experimenting with Collaborative zk-SNARKs: Zero-Knowledge Proofs for Distributed Secrets by Ozdemir and BonehPrivately Connecting Mobility to Infectious Diseases via Applied Cryptography Bampoulidis, Bruni, Helminger, Kales, Rechberger, and WalchLarge-Scale MPC: Scaling Private Iris Code Uniqueness Checks to Millions of Users by Bloemen, Kales, Sippl and WalchCollaborative SNARKs by Roman WalchNotes on Collaborative zkSNARKsMPC Primer - coCircomZK Podcast clip

SummaryThis week Anna and Zaki Manian dive into the Cosmos ecosystem and ask the question: is Cosmos Dead? They explore key events, teams and players who worked on Cosmos during different eras before teasing out the strengths and structural flaws that made the project what it is today. The conversation wraps with a discussion around new initiatives aimed at reviving the ecosystem and aligning factions in Cosmos together towards a central goal. Here’s some additional links for this episode:03:50 * Episode 286: Paris 2023 Recap with Uma, Zaki and Tarun20:38 * Episode 263: Cosmos, Sommelier and Emerging Assets with Zaki Manian32:16 * Episode 337: Restaking Research with Naveen & Tarun 55:11 * Cosmos SDK GitHub Cosmos WebsiteCosmos SDK Documentation Privacy in Cosmos Live: Zaki Manian (Sommelier)- The Unbearable Weight of Sovereign Multichain UX Check out the ZK Jobs Board for the latest jobs in ZK at jobsboard.zeroknowledge.fm zkSummit12 is happening in Lisbon on Oct 8th! Applications to attend are now open

SummaryIn this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun catch up with Andrew Miller. They cover his early work on consensus, ZK and MPC before switching focus to the topic of his current work: TEEs. They map his evolving opinion on TEEs and explore why they could be seen as an optimal solution to many of the blockchain challenges. Here’s some additional links for this episode:3:59 * Andrew Miller works5:32 * SoK: Research Perspectives and Challenges for Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies by Bonneau, Miller, Clark, Narayanan, Kroll, Felten 11:45 * Zerocash: Decentralized Anonymous Payments from Bitcoin by Ben-Sasson, Chiesa, Garman, Green, Miers, Tromer, and Virza 21:33 * The Honey Badger of BFT Protocols by Miller, Xia, Croman, Shi, and Song28:50 * DelegaTEE: Brokered Delegation Using Trusted Execution Environments byMatetic, Schneider, Miller, Juels and Capkun33:02 * Ratel: MPC-extensions for Smart Contracts by Li, Soska, Huang, Bellemare, Quintyne-Collins, Wang, Liu, Song and Miller33:02 * Ekiden: A Platform for Confidenti

SummaryThis week Anna and Nico chat with Arnaud Schenk, one of the original co-founders of Aztec and creator of the Polaris Fellowship. They discuss Arnaud’s recent blog post ‘On Trust Infrastructure’, exploring the down sides of a trustless system, the need to make online community building more possible and how programmable cryptography may play a role in these solutions. They explore the history of computer culture, the rejection of institutions by mid-90s internet culture and how the seeds for this were set by the 60s counterculture. Here’s some additional links for this episode:05:09 * Episode 75: Exploring Aztec with Zac Williamson05:09 * Episode 176: Zk-zk-rollup & zk.money with Zac and Joe from Aztec05:09 * Episode 273: History of Plonk, Noir, and the building of Aztec 307:38 * Episode 237: Exploring ZK Research with Jens Groth 20:01 * Into the deep end: making sense of PLONK - Zac Williamson (CTO, Aztec Protocol)23:55 * Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics and Creative Work by Michael P. Fa

SummaryIn this week’s episode Anna and Tarun chat with Naveen Durvasula about his recent work ‘Robust Restaking Networks’. They discuss Naveen’s early work on matching markets and how this led him to work on mechanism design before exploring how the concepts of restaking were first presented, and how both Naveen and Tarun have been working to better model the mechanisms underpinning restaking, to understand how they work and how they can be optimized. Further Reading:03:52 * Robust Restaking Networks by Naveen Durvasula and Tim Roughgarden06:00 * EigenLayer: The Restaking Collective EigenLayer TeamGeneral Bio + Previous Research of Naveen Durvasula Check out the ZK Jobs Board for the latest jobs in ZK at jobsboard.zeroknowledge.fm zkSummit12 is happening in Lisbon on Oct 8th! Applications to attend are now open at zksummit.com, apply today as early bird tickets are limited!Episode SponsorsAttention, all projects in need of server-side proving, kick start your rollup with Gevulot's ZkCloud, the first zk-optim

SummaryIn this week’s episode, Anna chats with Connor O’Hara from Celestia. After discussing the latest ZK Hack Montréal event where Connor was a judge, they dive into his professional background, the ecosystems he has been a part of and what led him to work on Celestia. They then discuss various ZK-focused initiatives within the Celestia ecosystem.Here’s some additional links for this episode:Episode 311: The Launch of Celestia and Beyond 03:22 ZK Hack Montréal 08:08 ZK Hack Devfolio24:33 Episode 151: John Adler on Optimistic vs ZK Rollup and the data availability problem30:24 Episode 208: Digging into Data Availability with Ismail Khoffi from Celestia41:26 Episode 220: The Road to Plonky2 with Brendan and Daniel from Polygon Zero46:49 Vitalik Buterin Endgame Blog Post 49:41 Light Nodes Everywhere: Why & How - Connor O'Hara at Modulard Summit 56:29 ZK11: 1 Circuit, 5 Rollups: Building a Re-Usable DA Integration for ZK Rollups - Connor O'HaraCheck out the ZK Jobs Board for the latest jobs in ZK at jobsboa

SummaryIn this week’s episode, Anna chats with Jens Groth and Daniel Marin from Nexus. They catch up on all things Groth16 with the author himself before diving into a variety topics, such as formal verification in the context of ZKPs, the Nexus architecture, the benefits and challenges of building a system from the ground up, folding and IVC plus the properties these offer in a zkVM context and much more. Here’s some additional links for this episode:ZKProof Conference in Berlin Nova: Recursive Zero-Knowledge Arguments from Folding Schemes by Kothapalli, Setty, and TziallaNexus zkVMEpisode 284: Using Formal Verification on ZK Systems with Jon Stephens Jens Groth Publication ListNexus Docs Nexus 1.0 MachineEnabling General-Purpose Verifiable Computing | Daniel Marin (Oct 2023) on YouTubeNexus 2.0 SETI@home zkSummit12 is happening in Lisbon on Oct 8th! Applications to speak or attend are now open at zksummit.com, speaker applications close TODAY (Aug 14th) and early bird tickets for attendance are limited!Laun

SummaryIn this week’s episode, Anna and Guille catch up with Joe Bonneau, Assistant Professor at NYU and Research Partner at a16z crypto research. They discuss the research Joe has been working on since he was last on the show in 2019, including Naysayer proofs, Zero-Knowledge Middleboxes, Sealed-Bid Auctions, and other ZK-related research projects to date.Here’s some additional links for this episode:03:18 * Episode 103: Exploring VDFs with Joseph Bonneau05:05 * Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies by Narayanan, Bonneau, Felten, Miller and Goldfeder 11:00 * Verifiable Delay Functions Dan Boneh, Joseph Bonneau, Benedikt Bunz, and Ben Fisch16:18 * Naysayer proofs by Seres, Glaeser and Bonneau 16:18 * Sealed-Bid Auctions31:06 * DARPA SIEVE Project 37:59 * Zombie: Middleboxes that Don’t Snoop by Zhang, DeStefano, Arun, Bonneau, Grubbs and Walfish37:59 * Zero-Knowledge Middleboxes by Grubbs, Arun, Zhang, Bonneau and Walfish51:18 * jbonneau.com 58:04 * Riggs: Decentralized Sealed-Bid Auctions by Tyagi, Arun, Fr

SummaryIn this week’s episode Anna chats with Ismael Hishon-Rezaizadeh, Founder and CEO at Lagrange Labs and Charalampos (Babis) Papamanthou, Head of Research at Lagrange and Co-Director of the Applied Cryptography Lab at Yale University.They revisit the concepts of zk-powered coprocessors and dive into the work that Charalampos did previous to joining Lagrange on Verifiable SQL. They then explore how this is incorporated into the Lagrange coprocessor system, the work they are doing on Reckle Trees, future work and what all this enables for dApp developers. They discuss their new prover marketplace, the general state of infrastructure and how they are keen to bring more concepts from general computing into decentralized blockchain systems. Here’s some additional links for this episode:13:07 * Protocols for Public Key Cryptosystems by Ralph C. Merkle13:23 * Certificate Revocation and Certificate Update by Naor and Nissim 14:08 * Episode 57: Merklize this! Merkle Trees & Patricia Tries 26:32 * Episode 327:

SummaryIn this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun sit down with Hart Lambur irl at EthCC week in Brussels. They start by exploring Hart’s project Across - a cross-chain interoperability solution and sister project to Uma. They explore the Across construction, the tradeoff space and how this compares to other interop solutions. Then, in ZK Podcast tradition, the group shift gears with a few drinks and explore thoughtful observations on the week in Brussels.Here’s some additional links for this episode:Hart Lambur’s TwitterUma WebsiteUma Docs Across Protocol Website Across Protocol Medium9:08 * SchellingCoin: A Minimal-Trust Universal Data Feed 39:13 * ERC-7683 Cross Chain Intents Website 50:58 * Episode 286: Paris 2023 Recap with Uma, Zaki and Tarun50:58 * Episode 292: State of ZK – Live at zkSummit10! 59:17 * Bell Curve Podcast - Deep Dive: The CAKE Framework & Building a One Click Experience | Hart Lambur & Stephane Gosselin 1:23:39 * ZK Whiteboard SessionsZK Hack Montreal has been announced for Aug 9 -

This week's ZK Podcast episode will be delayed to Thursday this week due to Brussels mania. In the meantime, we wanted to highlight the upcoming ZK Hack Montreal event, happening Aug 9-11 2024. This is the 4th IRL zk-focused hackathon produced by ZK Hack. Apply now to attend ZK Hack Montreal as a hacker and jump into zk. https://www.zkmontreal.com/ Find out more about ZK Hack & join the discord as well at https://zkhack.dev/

SummaryIn this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun meet with Varun Srinivasan, co-founder of Farcaster. They explore the Farcaster project, discussing the ideas that prompted its inception and what separates it from existing social media networks. The conversation explores the design space that Farcaster opens up for devs and the kinds of applications that can be built on top of it. Here’s some additional links for this episode:Farcaster Mastodon DiasporaMastodon ActivityPub Secure ScuttlebuttSupercast Drakula What is Frames? Frames Spec Farcaster Frames: what you need to knowWarpcast ZORA Surveycaster BlowfishOpenRank OpenRank Docs - Farcaster Integration NeynarZK Hack Montreal is happening Aug 9 - 11! Apply to join the hackathon here. Episode SponsorsGevulot is the first decentralized proving layer. With Gevulot, users can generate and verify proofs using any proof system, for any use case. Gevulot is offering priority access to ZK Podcast listeners, register on gevulot.com and write “ZK Podcast” in the note fie