Zero Knowledge

SummaryIn this week’s episode, Anna and Guille chat with Ying Tong Lai from Geometry Research and Bryan Gillespie from Inversed Tech about their latest research and works to date. They dive into the pair’s recent work ‘SoK: Programmable Privacy in Distributed Systems’, exploring the classifications and frameworks being introduced. Here’s some additional links for this episode:SoK: Programmable Privacy in Distributed Systems by Benarroch, Gillespie, Lai and Miller Private Programmability in Zcash - Research Results and Community Discussion Zcash Halo2 GitHub Zk0x02 - An intro to Zcash and zkSNARKs - Ariel Gabizon (Zcash) Moving SNARKs from the generic to algebraic group model by Ariel Gabizon Explaining SNARKs Part I: Homomorphic Hidings by Ariel Gabizon Differential Privacy in Constant Function Market Makers by Chitra, Angeris and EvansA Note on Privacy in Constant Function Market Makers by Angeris, Evans and ChitraOn Privacy Notions in Anonymous Communication by Kuhn, Beck, Schiffner, Jorswieck, and Strufe Z

SummaryIn this week’s episode Anna and Nico chat with Alessandro Chiesa, Associate Professor at EPFL and Eylon Yogev, Professor at Bar-Ilan University. They discuss their recent publication; Building Cryptographic Proofs from Hash Functions, which provides a comprehensive and rigorous treatment of cryptographic proofs and goes on to analyze notable constructions of SNARGs based on ideal hash functions. Here’s some additional links for this episode:Building Cryptographic Proofs from Hash Functions by Chiesa and YogevEpisode 200: SNARK Research & Pedagogy with Alessandro ChiesaBarriers for Succinct Arguments in the Random Oracle Model by Chiesa and Eylon Yogev STIR: Reed–Solomon Proximity Testing with Fewer Queries by Arnon, Chiesa, Fenzi and Eylon Yogev ZK Podcast Episode 321: STIR with Gal Arnon & Giacomo Fenzi Computationally Sound Proofs by Micali Tight Security Bounds for Micali’s SNARGs by Chiesa and Yogev Interactive Oracle Proofs by Ben-Sasson, Chiesa, and Spooner Summer School on Probabilistic

SummaryIn this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun chat with Sims Gautam and Liam Eagen from Alpen Labs. They dive into the world of Bitcoin L2s and focus on how ZK can be used to incorporate strong connections between Bitcoin and new execution environments. The group then explores BitVM, covenants, the distinction between the Bridge Operators and sequencers in this model and how this differs from how these actors work in Eth L2s. They then dive into SNARKnado, including what is happening under the hood, the ways in which this system offers round-based fraud games mixed with ZK and which agent provides DA and more. Here’s some additional links for this episode:Bulletproofs++: Next Generation Confidential Transactions via Reciprocal Set Membership Arguments by Eagen, Kanjalkar, Ruffing, Nick Bulletproofs: Short Proofs for Confidential Transactions and More by Bünz, Bootle, Boneh, Andrew, Wuille, and Maxwell Zcash Website Protogalaxy: Efficient Protostar-style folding of multiple instances by Eagen and Gabizon cq: *

SummaryIn this week’s episode Anna chats with Shumo and Yi from NEBRA. They discuss how NEBRA UPA, or Universal Proof Aggregation, can mitigate the high price of putting ZKPs on-chain. They cover what it takes to incorporate proving systems into NEBRA UPA as well as the benefits that these systems will bring, how developers are meant to interact with them, and future integrations to enable seamless cross-zkRollup applications. They cover prover marketplaces, verification aggregation systems, and the design space that these systems open up. Here’s some additional links for this episode:NEBRANEBRA UPA DemoNEBRA DocsUPA Gas Costs by NEBRAMIT Bitcoin ClubfflonK: a Fast-Fourier inspired verifier efficient version of PlonK by Gabizon and WilliamsonUniPlonK: PlonK with Universal Verifier by Chu, Gomes, Iglesias, Norton and TebbsThe Web3 Summit is back!The next edition will be happening in Berlin from Aug 19-21! You can head over to web3summit.com to apply, learn more and grab your tickets today. Episode SponsorsLaun

There is no episode this week, but 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 as well at https://zkhack.dev/

SummaryIn this week’s episode Anna and Kobi chat with Muthu Venkitasubramaniam and Carmit Hazay from Ligero. They discuss their work on MPC and ZK for the last 20 years and how the research has evolved. They then dive into a nuanced conversation on how MPC & ZK are interrelated. The discuss Ligero, what led to the project and the early phases, as well as the new Ligetron system and how they plan on getting this technology into the wild. Here’s some additional links for this episode:LigeroLigero: Lightweight Sublinear Arguments Without a Trusted Setup by Ames, Hazay, Ishai and VenkitasubramaniamLigetron by LigeroLigetron: Lightweight Scalable End-to-End Zero-Knowledge Proofs. Post-Quantum ZK-SNARKs on a Browser by Wang, Hazay and Venkitasubramaniamℓ-Diversity: Privacy Beyond k-Anonymity by Machanavajjhala, Gehrke, Kifer and VenkitasubramaniamEfficient RSA Key Generation and Threshold Paillier in the Two-Party Setting by Hazay, Mikkelsen, Rabin, Toft and NicolosiMeshCal.comZero-Knowledge from Secure Multi

SummaryIn this week’s episode Anna chats with Tracy Livengood, co-founder of Pluto; an applied cryptography org building developer tools which add verifiable data from web data to an on-chain application, using ZK. They discuss Tracy’s move from being an engineer in Web2, what prompted his move into the decentralized web and how he eventually found his way into the ZK space. He shares the concept of ‘Web Proofs’, and how Pluto can use some of the TLSNotary stack to bring private web data into on-chain applications as well as a future tool set he hopes to develop with the project. Here’s some additional links for this episode:Pluto.xyzPluto Telegram ChannelDocs.Pluto.xyz0xParc Signal vs. Noise: How LLMs Broke the Internet and How ZK Proofs Are Going to Fix It by Tracy Livengood Sign up for zkMesh here! Gevulot 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, re

SummaryThis week, Anna and Nico catch up with Antonio Sanso, Researcher at the Ethereum Foundation and Youssef El Housni, Engineer at ConsenSys and builder of Linea. They discuss Antonio and Youssef’s new work, Families of prime-order endomorphism-equipped embedded curves on pairing-friendly curves and dive into Elliptic Curve cryptography, Bandersnatch and Verkle Tries amongst much more, before dissecting what terms in the title of this paper truly mean. After getting into the weeds of cryptographic technicalities, the group explores where this work could be used and what it would enable. Here’s some additional links for this episode:zkSummit: A new optimized elliptic curve for one layer proof composition - Youssef El Housni (EY) ZK7: Pairings in a SNARK - Youssef El Housni - ConsenSysZK Study Club - ZEXE reading pt 1 (of 3)ZK Study Club - ZEXE reading pt 2 (of 3)ZK Study Club - ZEXE reading pt 3 (of 3)Introducing Bandersnatch: a fast elliptic curve built over the BLS12-381 scalar field by Masson and SansoV

SummaryThis week, Anna and Tarun catch up with Georgios Konstantopoulos, CTO of Paradigm and long-standing friend of the ZK Pod! First they cover the work Georgios has been doing since he last appeared on the show, covering everything from updates on Foundry to the more recent work on Reth. They then dig into what makes it different, what inspires its design, where it is heading and the eventual end goals of the project. They also chat about the general client node landscape, from the ETH 2.0 research days to present day, before diving into discussing different clients from different teams, how this diversity can protect a chain and how each client can differ. Here’s some additional links for this episode:Georgios’ GitHubIntroducing Reth by ParadigmReth GitHubEpisode 224: Foundry with Georgios KonstantopoulosLoom NetworkCryptoZombies Geth: EthereumFull BSC Node Guide: How to Run BNB Smart Chain Nodes GitHub: flashbots:mev-gethArbitrum The Definitive Guide to Sequencing by James PrestwichVerkle Trees

In this week’s episode, Anna and Guillermo catch up with Justin Thaler, Associate Professor at Georgetown and Research Partner at a16z. The group dive into a handful of points from Justin’s ‘17 Misconceptions about SNARKs’ article, discussing if his views have changed since it was published back in 2023 and whether some points have become common knowledge since the article first rippled through the ZK community. They then dive into his new zkVM Jolt, which was initially described along with Lasso in 2023, but has now been implemented and is open to contributions from the community. Here’s some additional links for this episode:17 misconceptions about SNARKs (and why they hold us back) by Justin Thaler ZK Hack Discord: contains Study Club, Thaler Book Club and more Approaching the 'lookup singularity': Introducing Lasso and Jolt Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing zkStudyClub - Lasso/Jolt (Justin Thaler, Georgetown University/a16z)Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies Book Episode 103: Exploring VDF

In this week’s episode, Anna and Kobi chat with Gal Arnon, Ph.D student from the Weizmann Institute of Science & Giacomo Fenzi, Ph.D. student in the COMPSEC Lab at EPFL. Gal and Giacomo are amongst the co-authors of ‘STIR: Reed–Solomon Proximity Testing with Fewer Queries’ and in this conversation, they discuss how their research led them to work on these topics and where the thesis for this particular work sparked from. They set the stage by exploring the history of FRI and discussing some hidden nuances in how FRI works. And then they introduce STIR, a system that can be used in place of FRI, which incorporates various optimisations to improve the performance. Here’s some additional links for this episode:FRIDA: Data Availability Sampling from FRI by Hall-Andersen, Simkin and WagnerLattice-Based Polynomial Commitments: Towards Asymptotic and Concrete Efficiency by Fenzi, Moghaddas and NguyenDEEP-FRI: Sampling Outside the Box Improves Soundness by Ben-Sasson, Goldberg, Kopparty and Saraf Proximity Gaps

In this week’s episode, Anna and Brendan Farmer catch up with Ben Fisch, CEO of Espresso Systems. They explore the inner workings of the current L2 sequencing landscape and then discuss how a shared sequencing marketplace like Espresso works. They touch on how MEV plays a part in the new system, how the role of the sequencer can be separated into subroles, how all these parts will work together in such a system and much more.Here’s some additional links for this episode:Episode 222: Something Brewing with Jill Gunter and Ben Fisch from Espresso Systems Episode 139: Findora with Benedikt Bunz and Ben Fisch Episode 88: Accumulators with Ben FischCAPE: Configurable Asset Privacy for EthereumCAPE GitHub by Espresso Systems Astria Website The Future of MEV is SUAVE by Flashbots Optimism by SuperchainBen Fisch - Beyond the Base Layer at EthDenver EigenDAEpisode 188: Analyzing Osmosis & Preventing MEV with Sunny and DevEpisode 216: A Dip into the Mempool & MEV with Project BlancEpisode 243: Dive Back into ME

In this week’s episode, Anna catches up with Jordi Baylina, OG Ethereum contributor and Polygon zkEVM Technical Lead. They cover what Jordi has been working on since he was last on the show in 2021. Back then, zkEVMs were still just an idea. Now that many of these systems have launched, they have a chance to look at how these fit into the general L2 landscape. They cover Jordi’s view on engineering decentralized systems and how these are rolled out, and the recent research from Polygon, including their AggLayer proposal. They wrap up on what inspires him to keep contributing in the space.Here’s some additional links for this episode:Polygon zkEVMEpisode 194: zkEVM with Jordi & David from HermezEpisode 145: Circom & Hermez with Jordi Baylina Episode 304: Exploring FRI, LogUp and using M31 for STARKs with Ulrich HaböckEpisode 303: A Dive into Binius with Ulvetanna Episode 313: Revisiting Hardware with IngonyamaThe next ZK Hack IRL is happening May 17-19 in Kraków, apply to join now at zkkrakow.com Gevul

In this week’s episode, Anna and Nico chat with Chelsea Komlo, Chief Scientist for the Zcash Foundation and member of the Cryptography, Security, and Privacy lab at the University of Waterloo.They discuss what sparked Chelsea’s interest in cryptography research, starting with her work contributing to Tor, to her move to Zcash and her PhD work on Threshold Signature Schemes. They define some important terms around different signature schemes and discuss possible optimizations that can be used to make these more performant. They then dive into her work on the FROST Threshold Signature Scheme plus some new upcoming work. Here’s some additional links for this episode:EdSIDH: Supersingular Isogeny Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange on Edwards Curves by Azarderakhsh, Lang, Jao and Koziel Efficient Signature Generation by Smart Cards by Schnorr FROST: Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold Signatures by Komlo and Goldberg Episode 316: Alin Tomescu on Distributed On-chain Randomness and Keyless Accounts Episode 295: Ret

This week, Anna and Tarun chat with Niraj Pant and Anish Agnihotri from Ritual. They kick off by revisiting the AIxCrypto intersection before diving into the Ritual product and its goals around developing open access AI infrastructure. They explore the opportunities that open up when you bring ML to smart contracts. Here’s some additional links for this episode:Episode 216: A Dip into the Mempool & MEV with Project Blanc Episode 246: Adversarial Machine Learning Research with Florian Tramèr Episode 314: Succinct’s Platform, Prover Network and SP1 FrenRug Website Mistral 7B by Jiang, Sablayrolles, Mensch, Bamford, Chaplot, De Las Casas, Bressand, Lengyel, Lample, Saulnier, Lavaud, Lachaux, Stock, Le Scao, Lavril, Wang, Lacroix, El Sayed docs.ritual.net Infernet by Ritual ML Quickstart Guide by Ritual Web3 Quickstart Guide by Ritual zkSummit11 happens in 2 weeks, if you haven’t got your tickets yet head over to the zkSummit website to apply now. The event will be held on 10 April in Athens, Greece.Check out

In this week’s episode, Anna and Nico chat with Alin Tomescu, founding team member and Head of Cryptography at Aptos Labs. They discuss Alin’s journey to Aptos and his work on distributed on-chain randomness as well as the new Aptos Keyless project. They cover the Keyless accounts architecture, how the flow works for the user and some of the subtleties in the approach they have taken.Here’s some additional links for this episode:Episode 302: ZK for web2 interop with zkLogin & ZK Email Episode 156: Stateless Validation with Alin Tomescu Episode 227: Move & Sui with Sam Blackshear from Mysten Labs Aptos Developer Documentation OpenPubkey: Augmenting OpenID Connect with User held Signing Keys by Heilman, Mugnier, Filippidis, Goldberg, Lipman, Marcus, Milano, Premkumar and Unrein Aptos Keyless Accounts slides Aptos Improvement Proposal (AIP) on Keyless Accounts Aptos Randomness API in Move slides Aptos Randomness API in Move slides presented by Alin Tomescu Aptos Improvement Proposal (AIP) on the Move Ran

This week’s episode is a little different from the usual and is split into two parts with Anna and Kobi exploring the history of ZK Hack, its origins and how the event has evolved into what it is today, including current activity in the ZK Hack ecosystem. The second half of the show splits off into Anna and Nico chatting the top 3 hackers from ZK Hack IV Online, which wrapped back in February. Each mini interview catches up with one of the winners and dives into what it was like to hack on the puzzles, which their favourites were and how they can be improved in the future. Here’s some additional links for this episode:ZK Jobs Board ZK Hack WebsiteEpisode 211: It’s a wrap! ZK Hack Takeaways & What’s Next! ZK HACK IV - Overview & Workshop Introductions: map featured at 1m28s ZK Hack Discord ZK Hack Whiteboard Sessions Proofs, Arguments, and Zero-Knowledge by Justin Thaler ZK Hack Whiteboard Session 1 - What is a SNARK? with Dan Boneh ZK Hack Whiteboard Session 2 - Building a SNARK (Part I) with Dan Bone

In this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun catch up with Uma Roy, CEO and cofounder of Succinct. They dive into Succinct’s developments over the last year ranging from the work they did on the ZK bridge infrastructure to the Succinct platform, the Succinct prover network and their most recent release of SP1. They discuss connections between these products, how their development evolved, the competitive landscape, the future for the project and much more.Here’s some additional links for this episode:Introducing Blobstream by Celestia Succinct Labs SP1 GitHub ZK Jobs Board Episode 255: Verifying Consensus On-Chain with Succinct Episode 286: Paris 2023 Recap with Uma, Zaki and Tarun [Alpha Succinct](alpha.succinct.xyz) Hugging Face AIEpisode 296: Zeth, Bonsai and RISC Zero with Brian and Jeremy Episode 251: Exploring RISC Zero with Brian Retford and Jeremy Bruestle Understanding Lasso and Jolt, from theory to code by Ragsdale, Zhu and Thaler Applications to attend zkSummit11 are now open, head over to the zkSummit w

In this week’s episode, Anna chats with Omer Shlomovits and Yuval Domb from Ingonyama. They go back to the start of the project, exploring Ingonyama’s initial vision for what ZK Hardware could be, how the field has evolved and how they are accelerating ZK Hardware today. The group discuss hardware product cycles, the hardware and algorithmic components, how a ZK ASIC is developed, they review some of the latest research from Ingonyama and more.Here’s some additional links for this episode:Episode 158: Threshold Cryptography with Omer Shlomovits from ZenGoEpisode 258: Ultrasound Money & VRFs with Justin Drake The first ever SNARK proving ASIC tweet by drakefjustinEpisode 266: ZK Hardware Sessions with Zprize Pt. 1Episode 267: ZK Hardware Sessions with Zprize Pt. 2 ZK10: ZPU: The Zero-Knowledge Processing Unit - Yuval DombSupranational WebsiteAccseal Twitter Episode 311: The Launch of Celestia and Beyond Episode 308: Avail’s Approach to DA with Prabal Banerjee Episode 301: EigenLayer @ DevconnectICICLE GitH

In this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun interview Brian Weickmann & Richard Liang from the ZKP2P project. They cover the opportunities and challenges of building ZK applications with the current tools available, as well as revisit the topic of ZK Email and explore how this lies at the heart of the current version of ZKP2P. They also discuss the goals of ZKP2P, what’s happening under the hood, the types of experiments and initiatives the project is running, how a user can already use the existing product and the opportunities systems like ZKP2P open up.Here’s some additional links for this episode:ZKP2P zkSummit11 Axiom’s Halo2 library Episode 302: ZK for web2 interop with zkLogin & ZK Email ZK Email 0xPARC 0xPARC Videos - Introduction to Circom ZKP2P - FAQ on UPIIndia: the frontier of payments innovationZK Hack Whiteboard Sessions Fibonacci Sequence ZK Regex Website Gnosis Pay TLSNotary Plaid Applications to attend zkSummit11 are now open, head over to the zkSummit website to apply now. The event will