Zero Knowledge

In this episode, we sit down with Howard Wu to explore zkSNARKs, the challenges in the application of this awesome technology, the new ideas emerging for how to scale them and his latest work on DIZK. This is the 2nd in our ongoing series about Zero Knowledge technologies. To get a good sense of Zero Knowledge Proofs, please listen to our introduction to the topic in Episode 21. Howard Wu is an early member of Blockchain at Berkeley, the co-author of Libsnark, and a managing partner of Dekrypt Capital. Links: libsnark - https://github.com/scipr-lab/libsnark libsnark-tutorial - https://github.com/howardwu/libsnark-tutorial DIZK paper - https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/691 DIZK library - https://github.com/scipr-lab/dizk

In this episode, we sit down with Raul & Preston from Prysmatic Labs to discuss sharding, the evolution of the spec, Ethereum 2.0, what happens to a side chain during a hard fork, and whats coming up for this important scaling solution. Prysmatic Labs is building a sharding solution in Go and the Ethereum 2.0  side chain that is set to combine PoS + Sharding. Links: https://medium.com/prysmatic-labs/how-to-scale-ethereum-sharding-explained-ba2e283b7fce https://medium.com/prysmatic-labs/ethereum-sharding-biweekly-development-update-9-prysmatic-labs-f2b1ad55e825

In this episode, we speak with Eric Tang from Livepeer about the need for off-chain computation, what scenarios make sense for off-chain and which can work on-chain, how Livepeer sees its role in the ecosystem and how they aim to help more people livestream in a decentralised way. Read more about Livepeer here If you want to get involved with the project, you can do so here Check out this paper by Jacob Eberhardt about off-chain computation. http://www.ise.tu-berlin.de/fileadmin/fg308/publications/2017/2017-eberhardt-tai-offchaining-patterns.pdf

In this episode, we sit down with Ethan (Bucky) Buchman, co-founder & CTO of Tendermint, to talk about testnets. We look into what they are, what purpose they serve and cover examples from Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cosmos and Polkadot. Links Testnets on Karl.tech The latest gossip on BFT consensus Bitcoin Testnet Ropsten Testnet Kovan Testnet Rinkeby Testnet Join the Cosmos testnet Join the Polkadot testnet

In this episode, we dig into what the term smart contract means with our guest James Prestwich. First introduced in 1994 by Nick Szabo, smart contracts have inspired whole ecosystems of companies and projects to start thinking about blockchain in much bigger terms. We explore what the term 'smart contract' means, where it comes from, some use cases and some of the new challenges that come along with it. Follow James on twitter @_prestwich

In this episode we sit down with Ele and Alexis from OSCoin to talk about what they are building and the general problem of open source incentivization. We dig into the incentivization and governance models they imagine for the Open Source world as well as some technical aspects of the platform they intend to build. Links: OScoin Social Architecture - Building On-line Communities Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure Elinor Ostrom Radical Markets Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society Open Source Without Maintainers

In this week's episode, we cover the Zcon0 conference in Montreal. In our interviews with some of the participants, we explore the zcash community, projects actually implementing zero knowledge proofs, and some of the most exciting ideas to be generated at the event! See the talks here Links: Bolt Coda Dekrypt Capital Antonie Hodge Peter Van Valkenburgh Liz Steininger J Ayo Akinyele Rachel Rose O'leary Awa Sun Yin Hudson Jameson Benedikt Bünz Agoric Str4d Nicola Greco Zooko

In this introductory episode, we discuss what makes up blocks and block headers. We also cover a bit about state vs history, what exactly makes up a transaction and do a quick intro to a Merkle Tree. For more, please check out these resources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_160oMzblY8 https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/268/ethereum-block-architecture https://www.coursera.org/lecture/cryptocurrency/bitcoin-blocks-I5uc7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkletree

In this episode, we speak with Jack du Rose and Aron Fischer from Colony about governance and open organizations. Colony is building an infrastructure based on the Ethereum blockchain that aims to revamp the way projects and organizations collaborate, promising to make HR and project management more open, fair and efficient. We discuss different ways in which the ideas around colony could be used to created shared and open organisations, how reputation is built as well as discuss their thougths around the general ideas of governance and some of the biggest challenges this creates. For more about Colony - have a look at their site or follow them on twitter!

In this episode, Griff Green shares his experience of working through The DAO hack, the white hat hacker group & Giveth. Through his telling of this story, we are given a front row seat to one of the most exciting events in ethereum and general blockchain history. These events also set the stage for a lot of the decisions, attitudes, rifts and relationships that have since taken hold - from the emergence of the white hat hacker group, the currency split, to the attitude towards governance and immutibility and the community's attitude towards the very concept of a DAO. The story leads us to Griff's latest project Giveth, an ethereum-based project that aims to bring back some of the most inspiring ideas from the era of the DAO, and applies them towards charitable giving. To get involved with Giveth check out their Riot Channel To hear a bit more about Griff's work check out this video or follow him on twitter HERE

In this week's episode, we share our interviews from ETHBuenosAires, the 3rd instalment of the ETHGlobal Hackathon series. Through these conversations with the participants, sponsors and organizers, we found out more about the Buenos Aires Blockchain scene, captured the spirit of the ETHGlobal series and learned about some amazing new ideas and hackathon projects This was recorded during the event, but you can watch the winners presenting HERE More links: EthBuenosAires Website & Twitter Kimono Crypto Against Humanity Denode Token Toilet Other projects that were mentioned: http://www.thegraph.com/ All Submissions can be seen here Follow the peeps we interviewed on twitter: https://twitter.com/cryptowanderer https://twitter.com/ethstatus https://twitter.com/licuende https://twitter.com/AragonProject https://twitter.com/MakerDAO https://twitter.com/komodoman https://twitter.com/liamihorne https://twitter.com/nanexcool https://twitter.com/gomox_ar https://twitter.com/crypt0glit

Coming to you from Buenos Aires, we sit down with Demi and Facu from Zeppelin Solutions to talk developer experience, upgradability and how they aim to make running software on blockchains simple, fast and error free. We discuss their products - OpenZeppelin, a framework of reusable smart contracts, and ZeppelinOS, an operating system designed specifically for smart contracts - and how these projects have emerged from their work as auditors on some of the most important projects in the space. They introduce their proposal for upgradability, a method for making some alterations to existing smart contracts without impeding immutability. Here are a few links to find out more: https://zeppelin.solutions/ https://openzeppelin.org/ https://zeppelinos.org/ https://ethernaut.zeppelin.solutions/

In this episode, we sit down with Lane Rettig and Alex Beregszaszi from the eWasm team at the Ethereum Foundation to talk about WebAssembly (Wasm). We explore why Wasm was chosen as the instruction set of the future for Ethereum, what it means to switch instructions sets and why you would want to go with one over another. We also dig into Wasm specifics and tooling. If you want to learn more about Wasm, check out some of the links below: Official Wasm website eWasm design repo where there are documents discussing the different VMs as well as goals, motivations and design specs of eWasm. K Framework description

In this episode, we catch up with Phil Daian once again to dig deeper into the idea of cryptocommodities and storage rent. Cryptocommodities are defined as the resources used for blockchain transactions - for example blockchain memory or computation (such as Ethereum's gas) - and storage rent is the idea of issuing a payment for use of these resources per unit of time instead of as a one-time fee. We discuss how the storage rent idea is becoming increasingly relevant as blockchain technology becomes more widely adopted, and the challenges in implementing this into existing systems. Phil is a researcher with IC3 and PhD student at Cornell Tech as well as the creator of GasToken and member of Project Chicago. Some links: Phil's site IC3 Cornell Tech Project chicago Gas Token

In this special episode, we share a number of short interviews we did with the participants of the Web3 UX Unconference which followed Edcon last week in Toronto. Featuring Dan Finlay from Metamask, Alex van de Sande from the Ethereum Foundation, Ric Burton from Balance, Philippe Castonguay, Jonny Howle from Uport, Dan Tsui and Bryant Eisenbach, we explore the topic of UX in the blockchain space. Thanks to guest co-host Maciej Hirsz! Find & follow the guests on Twitter: www.twitter.com/danfinlay www.twitter.com/metamask www.twitter.com/avsa www.twitter.com/ethereum www.twitter.com/ricburton www.twitter.com/Balance_io www.twitter.com/PhABCD www.twitter.com/JonnyAustinTX www.twitter.com/uport www.twitter.com/fubuloubu Thanks to @derek_sys & @sdtsui for organising!

In this episode, we share an introduction to full nodes. Speaking with the Parity community support lead, Thibaut Sardan, we walk through what it means to set up the Parity Ethereum client, explore what the difference is between this and a light client, help define some of the commonly used language and answer some frequently asked questions. Big thank you to 1kx for inviting us to the Full Node co-working space to record this episode! Links: Parity FAQ Parity UI and Light Wallets

In this weeks episode, Fredrik and Anna speak with Elias Haase and Rob Hitchens from B9Lab about how a curriculum can be developed to introduce developers to the concepts and languages in the blockchain space. We discuss some of their process, the unique qualities of teaching in this space and how important it is that the people building core infrastructure consider the impact of their decisions on society in the future. Links: B9Lab on Twitter B9Lab Be sure to follow us on twitter @zeroknowedgefm

In this episode, we kick off the Zero Knowledge Proof series with our very own 'Intro to Zero Knowledge' in which we go through a couple examples that describe the underlying concept of this important field of research. Basically, the Zero Knowledge hosts are talking about Zero Knowledge Proofs on the Zero Knowledge Podcast. It promises to get meta. Links: Where's Waldo example Str4d presenting the Billiard Balls example at ZK0x01 Sudoku ZKP example Eli Ben Sasson presenting STARKs

In this episode, Fredrik sits down with Jon Choi from the Ethereum Foundation to discuss the latest scalability grants and what the plans are for the Ethereum Foundation grants in general. We also delve into what a business model for core infrastructure could mean and how to avoid the tragedy of the commons where no one is willing to invest in vital infrastructure because of the lack of immediate incentive. Finally, we discuss the general ecosystem, how we can learn from each other, how and what to build and what's needed before Ethereum can really become a platform suitable for mass adoption.

We welcome Jack back to the show to discuss what's been going on in our world for the past month. We share a little review of our recent event - the Zero Knowledge Summit - and an update from the Taiwan Sharding Workshop. We also discuss the role of testnets and explore the purpose and practice of ASIC resistance. Links to things talked about in the episode: Fredriks talk about Rust smart contracts & wasm Ethereum Sharding Research Compendium Zero Knowledge Youtube channel Zero Knowledge Twitter account (stay up to date folks) ASIC resistance EIP Phil Daian's (previous guest) blog post response to hard forking for ASIC resistance