Zero Knowledge

In this episode, we chat with Flavio Bergamaschi from IBM research about Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). FHE allows for computation on encrypted data. First developed in 2009 at IBM, this tech has long been the considered only theoretically possible. However, as we learn in the interview, there have been strides made in the last few years and we are starting to see FHE technology being used in some real world applications. In this interview, we discuss the origin of the technology, what it is, how it can be combined with other cryptographic techniques such as MPC and ZKPs, and applications for FHE technology being explored today. Here are some relevant links: IBM's Open Source Homomorphic Encryption Library (HElib) v1.0.0 Towards a Homomorphic Machine Learning Big Data Pipeline for the Financial Services Sector Homomorphic Training of 30,000 Logistic Regression Models Homomorphically Securing AI at the Edge Article on IBM's FHE work with a Brazilian bank Episode 63: Proxy re-encryption and

In this episode, we catch up with Sean Bowe and Daira Hopwood from the Electric Coin Company to chat about Halo, a recursive proof composition that doesn't require a trusted setup. We cover the efficiency techniques used in Halo such as "nested amortization", how the protocol was developed, what some of the key findings are, and how it fits in with the other recent SNARK-based protocols. We touch on the following material: Sean Bowe on SNARKs, Trusted Setups & Elliptic Curve Cryptography https://github.com/daira/tweedle Halo whitepaper Endomorphism Latest recursive SNARKitecture with Izaak Meckler from O(1)Labs Exploring the Fractal transparent SNARK construction If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKPatreon Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz ZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this week's episode, we chat with Benjamin Perez from Trail of Bits about zero knowledge proof systems and security. We touch on the evolution of the crypto tech auditing business, the new challenges that emerge in zero knowledge proof systems regarding security, some of the recent bugs and vulnerabilities found in zkp systems and more! Here is our previous episode on this topic with JP of Trail of Bits Here is some background on the zkp vulnerabilities mentioned. An Empirical Analysis of Anonymity in Zcash Remote Side-Channel Attacks on Anonymous Transactions If you want to join the zkSummit 5 online event, happening on Marcch 31st at 7 am PST, 10am EST, 4pm CET, please buy a ticket for the crowdcast here: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/zksummit Hope to see you there! If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKPatreon Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fB

In this episode, we meet with Galen Wolf-Pauly from the Tlon Corporation to discuss the project Urbit. Urbit is an encrypted peer-to-peer network comprised of a deterministic operating system (Urbit OS / Arvo) and a secure, global identity layer (Urbit ID / Azimuth). The Urbit contributors have created new stack, built from the ground up as an integrated system with a focus on user experience. It also describes itself as a personal server built from scratch. For some additional links about the project, have a look here: https://urbit.org/faq/ https://urbit.org/blog/urbit-and-the-blockchain/ https://urbit.org/blog/urbit-for-normies/ If you are interested in participanting in the now ONLINE version of the zkSummit - Sign up directly here: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/zksummit You will then receive a link to an updated ticket page shortly. If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKPatreon Or directly here: ETH:

In this episode, we catch up with Justin Drake and Vitalik Buterin from the Ethereum Foundation to chat about how zero knowledge proof systems are being used throughout the Eth1x and Eth2.0 stacks. We look at their applications for privacy and scalability throughout layer 1, layer 1.5 and layer 2, as well as explore some other emerging applications. Here were some of the articles and ideas discussed: 5 ways to optimise zkps: Remove the need for FFTs Sparseness Recursion Custom gates Hardware Jacobian groups https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/196.pdf Trilinear maps https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.07923 Give the Zero Knowledge Podcast some feedback. Whether you are a long-time listener or new to the show, we would love to hear from you! Please share your feedback with us here: https://forms.gle/LtQQyKJV6r7LrSND7 If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Catch up with us on Youtube Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKP Patreon Or directly here: ETH: 0

In this week’s episode, we sit down with Alistair Stewart and Jeff Burges, researchers at the Web3 Foundation, to dig into what they are working on, what they are thinking about at the moment, and how zero knowledge proofs can be used throughout the Polkadot ecosystem. Here are some links and ressources to check out: Gavin Wood episode Rob Habermeier episode The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work Daniel Bernstein on Twitter Isogenies VDF Axolotl Ratchet Thank you to this week's sponsor Trail of Bits Check out the blog post describing how Manticore could have discovered the ENS bug here: https://blog.trailofbits.com/2020/03/03/manticore-discovers-the-ens-bug/ Thanks again Trail of Bits. If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKPatreon Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz ZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this week's episode, we catch up with our friends Tarun Chitra and James Prestwich at the Stanford Blockchain Conference. We chat about the Flashloan phenomenon & the recent arbitrage 'exploit'. We also catch up about the known challenges facing PoS systems, what EVM support means on other chains & more! Catch our previous episodes with Tarun and James here: https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/99 https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/61 https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/34 The tweet that Anna quotes in the episode is here -> https://twitter.com/bneiluj/status/1228757175595438080 If you want to join the zkSummit, happening on March 31st, Berlin, do get your application in here: https://forms.gle/WDhUCmowAEk2ymYa7 Thanks to this week's sponsor Nucypher! Nucypher is currently looking for an engineering lead to work on a new open-source cryptosystem for privacy-preserving smart contracts. This is a new product and so you will get to work on some cool primitives like fully homomorphic encryption

In this week’s episode, we take the podcast in a slightly different direction and dive into Isogenies - a topic at the cutting edge of cryptography. We look at how they are related to VDFs and randomness generation. Our guest, Luca de Feo, one of the co-inventor of SIDH, helps us get an understanding for what Isogenies - or morphisms of algebraic groups - really are. Here are some useful links to check out: https://sike.org/ https://isogeny.org/ https://vdfresearch.org/ Some visualizations: https://isogenies.enricflorit.com/ Some blog posts: https://blog.intothesymmetry.com/2019/07/on-isogenies-verifiable-delay-functions.html https://www.esat.kuleuven.be/cosic/asiacrypt19-verifiable-delay-functions-from-supersingular-isogenies-and-pairings/ https://www.esat.kuleuven.be/cosic/elliptic-curves-are-quantum-dead-long-live-elliptic-curves/ https://www.esat.kuleuven.be/cosic/csidh-post-quantum-key-exchange-using-isogeny-based-group-actions/ https://www.esat.kuleuven.be/cosic/csi-fish-a-new-record-class-group-co

In this week's episode of the podcast, we catch up with Alex Glukowski of Matter Labs to hear about zkSync, the latest iteration of their zkRollup implementation built to be a scaling and privacy engine for Ethereum. We also touch on the Redshift protocol, a new transparent zkSNARK system that emerged as a result of work on this system. Here are a few links that we mention: Previous episode on Matter Labs ZkSync and Redshift REDSHIFT: Transparent SNARKs from List Polynomial Commitment IOPs Hotstuff paper Give the Zero Knowledge Podcast some feedback. Whether you are a long-time listener or new to the show, we would love to hear from you! Please share your feedback with us here: https://forms.gle/LtQQyKJV6r7LrSND7 If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Catch up with us on Youtube Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKP Patreon Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz ZEC: t1R2b

In this week’s episode, we catch up with Christopher Goes, IBC Lead at Tendermint. We learn a bit more about the Cosmos Network ecosystem and his work on IBC. We then focus in on how he is thinking about zero knowledge proofs in the context of IBC like-interoperability constructions. We explore some of the ways in which zkps could be incorporated into different schemes for interoperability - including bridging, lightclient constructions, validity proofs and more. We mention the following episodes on Cosmos: Light Clients and ZKPs with Celo Diving into Cosmos with Sunny Give the Zero Knowledge Podcast some feedback. Whether you are a long-time listener or new to the show, we would love to hear from you! Please share your feedback with us here: https://forms.gle/LtQQyKJV6r7LrSND7 If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Catch up with us on Youtube Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKP Patreon Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B

This week, we explore the Fractal transparent SNARK construction with its authors Dev Ojha and Nick Spooner - both students of Alessandro Chiesa at UC Berkeley. We explore how Fractal works, how it improves on some of the earlier work on Sonic and Marlin, how it borrows from but differentiates itself from STARKs, as well as what they discovered while working on this paper about recursive SNARKs and what makes that property possible. Here is some of the material we touch on: Fractal Paper Ariel Gabizon's episode Eli Ben-sasson's episode Marlin Paper Digging into recursive snarks Latest recursive SNARKitecture with Izaak Meckler from O(1)Labs Thank you to this week's sponsor Trail of Bits Just recently, a critical vulnerability was found in the certificate validation functionality on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016/2019 This bug allows attackers to break the validation of trust in a wide variety of contexts, such as HTTPS and code signing - Trail of Bits has developed a PoC exploit and pu

In this week’s episode, we catch up with Izaak Meckler from 0(1) Labs to talk about launching a recursive snark based incentivised test net, a recap of recursive SNARKs, updates on the working SNARKitecture, and a look at what's next for the project. We also touch on some new use-cases and ideas for how zkps may be a component in making computer programmes potentially more accountable to their users. Please listen to our earlier episode with Izaak and Evan to get a full picture of 0(1)Labs and the Coda project Here are a few of the other projects we mentioned! ZEXE Marlin Fractal Notes from the SNARKoconomicon at the zkSummit Give the Zero Knowledge Podcast some feedback. Whether you are a long-time listener or new to the show, we would love to hear from you! Please share your feedback with us here: https://forms.gle/LtQQyKJV6r7LrSND7 If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Catch up with us on Youtube Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZK

In this week’s episode, we learn more about Plonk with Ariel Gabizon and Zac Williamson from Aztec. PLONK is a recent highly efficient, universal SNARK construction. We explore what distinguishes Plonk from some other other new constructions including their focus on Lagrange-bases to deconstruct complex problem statements into simple polynomial identities. This episode goes very deep and so we do recommend you check out a few of previous episodes to help you follow along! All mentioned can be found here along with the other deep zk-topic episodes: https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/zkseries Here is Justin Drake Polynomial commitment schemes study club video, as well as videos from the zkSummit on Marlin and Supersonics Ariel also mentions the [Bayer groth permutation argument](www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/J.Groth/MinimalShuffle.pdf) which influenced their work. Thanks to this week's sponsor Nucypher! On January 20th, NuCypher's incentivized testnet is launching on Coinlist. This incentivised testnet ha

In this week’s episode, we chat with Roman Storm and Roman Semanov from Tornado.cash all about mixers. We explore what they are used for and how they work, how Zero Knowledge can be incorporated to provide more privacy, what the challenges are and what the future holds for the Tornado.Cash project. Here are some episodes or resources we mention: https://tornado.cash/ https://medium.com/@tornado.cash/tornado-cash-version-2-has-been-released-8c739d3706df https://github.com/tornadocash https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/50 (Episode with Zooko) Give the Zero Knowledge Podcast some feedback. Whether you are a long-time listener or new to the show, we would love to hear from you! Please share your feedback with us here: https://forms.gle/LtQQyKJV6r7LrSND7 If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Catch up with us on Youtube Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKP Patreon Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBx

In this end of year episode, we chat about what we've learned in 2019, some of our favourite episodes, this year's explosion in ZK research and what we are looking forward to in 2020! Thanks to Henrik José for updated jingle! We mention a number of episodes from this past year, have a look through our episodes here: https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/ For the Zk Specific episodes have a look here: https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/zkseries Give the Zero Knowledge Podcast some feedback. Whether you are a long-time listener or new to the show, we would love to hear from you! Please share your feedback with us here: https://forms.gle/LtQQyKJV6r7LrSND7 If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Catch up with us on Youtube Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKP Patreon Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz ZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this week’s episode, Anna sits down with Daniel Benarroch and Aviv Zohar from QEDIT - a privacy software startup focused on bringing Zero Knowledge to enterprise customers. We chat about the power of zero knowledge proof systems, some of the emerging use cases using zk systems and The Zero Knowledge Standardization Effort. Here are some links we mention: Aviv's website Hilbert's problems - twenty-three unsolved problems in mathematics presented in 1900 Give the Zero Knowledge Podcast some feedback. Whether you are a long-time listener or new to the show, we would love to hear from you! Please share your feedback with us here: https://forms.gle/LtQQyKJV6r7LrSND7 If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Catch up with us on Youtube Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKP Patreon Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz ZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

This week we catch up with Zaki Manian, Director at Tendermint, the company building Cosmos architecture, and co-founder of Iqlusion Validator. We chat about the blockchain in Silicon Valley, why SF loves DeFi, the challenge of balancing pragmatism and regulation with a decentralised ideology, the nuances of PoS systems, the wins of 2019 and what is on the horizon. Here are links to a few things we discuss: -Tarun Chitra's paper on how the existance of derivatives can undermine the security of a PoS system -Blog post summarizing Tarun's paper here -ZKValidator Give the Zero Knowledge Podcast some feedback. Whether you are a long-time listener or new to the show, we would love to hear from you! Please share your feedback with us here: https://forms.gle/LtQQyKJV6r7LrSND7 If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Catch up with us on Youtube Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKP Patreon Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6

In this week’s episode, we catch-up our friend Lucas Vogelsang from Centrifuge. Centrifuge is an open, decentralized platform to connect the global financial supply chain. We chat about the journey Lucas took to co-founding this company, how privacy plays a role in his thinking and we discover what it means to be a project building with zkSNARKs today. We touch on a few previous episodes including: Zooko talks Zcash on our 50th episode Zokrates with Jacob Eberhardt Circom & Snarkjs from the zkSummit zk0x03 Thanks to this week's sponsor Nucypher! Nucypher is currently looking for an engineering lead to work on a new open-source cryptosystem for privacy-preserving smart contracts. This is a new product and so you will get to work on some cool primitives like fully homomorphic encryption and zero knowledge proofs. For more about lead engineer role, check out the ad here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21693548 If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm Join us o

In this week's episode, we chat with Juan Benet, founder of Protocol Labs, about IPFS, Libp2p, and the much anticipated incentivised decentralised storage protocol Filecoin. We dig into the history of the Filecoin project, the gap in the “market” they are trying to fill, the challenges they have found in the development of the Filecoin protocol and the latest tech they are exploring. Here are some helpful links: https://ipfs.io/ https://libp2p.io/ https://filecoin.io/ https://protocol.ai/ https://protocol.ai/projects/#IPFS Decentralised storage pt 1 Orient Decentralised storage pt 2 Arweave Decentralised Storage episode You can see some of the constraints and parameters for filecoin here: https://filecoin-project.github.io/specs/docs/diagrams/orient/filecoin.dot.svg https://filecoin-project.github.io/specs/#appendixorient https://github.com/filecoin-project/specs/tree/master/src/orient Give the Zero Knowledge Podcast some feedback. Whether you are a long-time listener or new to the show, we

In this week’s episode, we catchup with Alan Szepieniec, a researchers at Nervos and co-author of the Supersonics paper & the Marvellous family of Hash Functions (which specify the Vision/Rescue cyphers). We chat about his past work in cryptography, how the Supersonics paper came to be, and dive into the new generation of hash functions emerging, including the Marvelous universe. For more info, please have a look at these resources and past episodes! Design of Symmetric-Key Primitives for Advanced Cryptographic Protocols (the Marvellous (Vision/Rescue) paper) Transparent SNARKs from DARK Compilers (Supersonic paper) On a Generalization of Substitution-Permutation Networks: The HADES Design Strategy - Competing designs for arithmetization-friendly hash functions Starkad and Poseidon: New Hash Functions for Zero Knowledge Proof Systems MiMC https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/492.pdf and attack https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/951.pdf Jarvis and Friday, the first members of the Marvellous universe (may they rest i