Zero Knowledge

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

In this week’s episode, Anna and Guillermo chat with Yaz Khoury and Ismail Khoffi from Celestia. They share how the team prepared for the launch of the Celestia mainnet and what has been happening at Celestia since. They revisit the topic of DA (Data Availability) and explore how rollups and dApp developers can already use the Celestia DA layer. The group discusses Blobstream, which brings the benefits of Celestia to Ethereum and helps to scale the network, as well as community building, the modular thesis and much more.Here’s some additional links for this episode:Episode 151: John Adler on Optimistic vs ZK Rollup and the data availability problem Episode 208: Digging into Data Availability with Ismail Khoffi from Celestia Episode 268: A Rollup-Centric Future & Sovereign Chains with Mustafa Al-Bassam Ismail Khoffi of Celestia (Sovereign Radio) Celestia Improvement Proposal GitHub Introducing the Celestia Improvement Proposal Process Introduction to Arbitrum rollups with Celestia as DA Introducing Blobstr

In this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun chat with Noam Nisan, Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Principle Researcher at StarkWare Industries and one of the pioneers in the field of Algorithmic Game Theory. They cover his extensive research and academic background, starting with his work on complexity theory as well as Algorithmic Game Theory and his current work on blockchains and Tokenomics at StarkWare. They discuss his recent blog post; Simple Tokenomics for a Proof-of-Stake Utility Token, comparing the measurable Tokenomic outcomes of different live PoS systems and explore how Noam aimed to better communicate best practices for those designing these systems, plus much more.Here’s some additional links for this episode:Simple Tokenomics for a Proof-of-Stake Utility Token by Noam NisanAlgorithmic Game Theory by Nisan, Roughgarden, Tardos and Vasirani The Elements of Computing Systems by Nisan and Schocken Game Theory, Alive by Karlin and Peres Algorithmic VS Mechanism Design The Federmann Cent

** This episode uses visual aids and slides throughout, you may want to check out the video version here**In this week’s episode, Anna and Nico Mohnblatt from Geometry Research host a ZK Jargon Decoder episode. Based on Nico’s ZK Jargon Decoder Website, they discuss some of the confusing terms and concepts commonly used by the ZK community. The session aims to be digestible for those still in the early stages of their ZK learning journey, but it does take a dive into the depths of detail every now and again! This episode uses visual aids and slides throughout, so you may want to check out the full video version of this discussion over on the ZK Podcast YouTube channel. This ZK Jargon Decoder Session is also very well complimented by the ZK Whiteboard sessions. Nico specifically references sessions 1, 4, 5 and 6. Here’s some additional links for this episode:ZK HACK IV - ZK Jargon Decoder ZK Jargon Decoder GitHub ZK Hack IV Sessions Playlist ZK-WALDO: A Simple Zero Knowledge Proof ZK Whiteboard Sessions: What

In this week’s episode, Anna catches up with Prabal Banerjee, co-founder of Avail. They deep dive into Prabal’s career, starting with his work in academia, his move to Polygon and to his spinning out the Avail project. They discuss how the project was built, tech decisions and the motivations behind them as well as their use of KZG, validity proofs and their position within the Ethereum and wider blockchain ecosystem. They go on to revisit Data Availability and the interaction with different parts of the modular blockchain stack, comparing Avail to competing systems and cover edge-cases and their impact in a DA-secured stack. Here’s some additional links for this episode:Polygon.technology Fraud and Data Availability Proofs: Maximising Light Client Security and Scaling Blockchains with Dishonest Majorities by Al-Bassam, Sonnino and Buterin Episode 208: Digging into Data Availability with Ismail Khoffi from Celestia Episode 268: A Rollup-Centric Future & Sovereign Chains with Mustafa Al-Bassam Episode 301:

This week, Anna caught up on all things Aleo with Howard Wu co-founder of the Aleo Network & Alex Pruden executive director of the Aleo Foundation. Howard was last on the show back in 2020 when Aleo was in its infancy, so the group dive into how the project has evolved over the last few years, covering lessons learned along the way as well as technical decisions, detours, breakthroughs and reflecting on initial goals as they built out the system. Here’s some additional links for this episode:Episode 144: Aleo with Howard WuEpisode 38: Intro to zkSNARKs with Howard Wuzk-creds: Flexible Anonymous Credentials from zkSNARKs and Existing Identity Infrastructure by Rosenberg, White, Garman, and MierszPass by Aleo Cloudflare Aleo HQ GitHub for ZEXE Leo by AleoPenumbra ZK Hack IV online is now live, sign up for the next session on Tuesday 23 Jan here. For the latest news on the event check out the zhhack.dev/zkhackIV website.Launching soon, Namada is a proof-of-stake L1 blockchain focused on multichain, asset-ag

In this week’s episode, Anna and cohosts Guillermo, Kobi, Nico and Tarun share their predictions, hopes (and worries) for ZK in 2024. They cover emerging ideas in ZK, research predictions, dream applications, the best case for ZK in 2024, the worst case for ZK, possible ‘Black Swans’ and more. ZK Hack IV online is coming soon, sign up for the kick-off session on 16th Jan here. For the latest news on the event check out the zhhack.dev/zkhackIV website. Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup. As Aleo is gearing up for their mainnet launch in Q1, this is an invitation to be part of a transformational ZK journey. Dive deeper and discover more about Aleo at http://aleo.org/ If you like what we do: Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree Subscribe to our podcast newsletter Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Catch us on YouTube

In this week’s episode, Anna catches up in person with Guillermo, Tarun and Alex Evans for a look back at 2023. They revisit their state of mind back in Jan 2023 and share how the year unfolded and evolved for each of them as well as the ZK space as a whole. They survey the themes, applications and research topics that dominated ZK throughout this year and offer retrospective takes on how the ecosystem has changed. Hope you enjoy! We are taking the next week off, but will return with our look forward to 2024 episode in the new year. Here’s some additional links for this episode:Succinct Proofs in Linear Algebra by Evans and Angeris17 misconceptions about SNARKs (and why they hold us back) by ThalerAnna Rose’s zkpod.ai Blog Postzkpod.ai WebsiteEpisode 265: Where ZK and ML intersect with Yi Sun and Daniel KangEpisode 256: New ZK Use Cases with Dan Boneh Episode 260: ZK in 2023 with Kobi, Guillermo, and Tarun Episode 302: ZK for web2 interop with zkLogin & ZK Email zkSummit9 Playlist ZK Hack Lisbon ZK Hack I

In this week’s episode, host Anna Rose and cohost Nico Mohnblatt catch up with Ulrich Haböck, an applied cryptographer at Polygon Labs. This episode revolves around Ulrich’s journey into applied zero-knowledge cryptography, transitioning from an academic environment to being a full-time practitioner. They discuss his contributions to the field, including his many write-ups and manuscripts as well as his breakthrough research on Multivariate lookups with his work logUp. They also cover his work on logarithmic derivative lookups using GKR with Shahar Papini, as well as his innovative approaches to STARKs over finite fields that are not ‘NTT-friendly’. This episode offers a deep dive into the complexities and breakthroughs in applied cryptography.Here’s some additional links for this episode:A summary on the FRI low degree test by Ulrich Haböck Brakedown's expander code by Ulrich Haböck Improving LogUp with GKR - By Ulrich from PolygonImproving logarithmic derivative lookups using GKR by Papini and Haböck flooku

In this week's episode, Anna and cohost Brendan Farmer catch up with Jim Posen and Radi Cojbasic from Ulvetanna. They cover the origin story of Ulvetanna and their work on the ZK hardware/software intersection before moving on to discuss Binius, a new proving system they developed which is optimised for hardware. Binius is built on towers of binary fields and draws on recent breakthroughs on SNARKs. This work continues the trend towards the use of smaller fields and was inspired by the development of new lookup arguments, work done on multilinear provers and sum-check as well as the use of recursive composition in SNARKs. Here’s some additional links for this episode:Succinct Arguments over Towers of Binary Fields by Diamond and Posen Binius: a Hardware-Optimized SNARKEpisode 170: Hardware for ZKPs & VDFs with Supranational Episode 266: ZK Hardware Sessions with Zprize Pt. 1Episode 267: ZK Hardware Sessions with Zprize Pt. 2Scalable, transparent, and post-quantum secure computational integrity by Ben-Sass

This week Anna and cohost Kobi chat with both Kostas Kryptos from Mysten Labs, discussing the zkLogin project and Aayush Gupta representing the ZK Email + Email Wallet projects. They explore the use case of web2 onboarding into web3, through the lens of these two different projects which emerged independently but share a lot of the same characteristics. They discuss the way this use case problem was first identified, the solution that each project came up with independently, the decisions that each project took and the future use cases they would enable.Here’s some additional links mentioned in this episode:Sui by zkLogin zkSend by Mysten Labs ZK Email Email WalletAayush G’s ZK Email Blog JSON Web Token Winterfell STARK prover and verifier Contract Wallet Using Emails by Suegami and Shibano xJsnark: A Framework for Efficient Verifiable Computation by Kosba Papamanthou and Shi RSA Algorithm in Cryptography Further relevant links:Episode 227: Move & Sui with Sam Blackshear from Mysten LabsEpisode 257: Proof

This week, Anna catches up with Tarun Chitra and Sreeram Kannan during a spontaneous session recorded at Devconnect 2023 in Istanbul! They cover a variety of topics seen at the event, including zk toolkits, intents and Data Availability, shedding light on how these ideas are reshaping the framework of digital interaction and governance. Their chat covers the challenges and opportunities these technologies present, highlighting their significance in the current ecosystem. Later, they explore the complexities and nuances of EigenLayer, offering detailed insights into its functionalities, applications, and potential impact on the industry. Here’s some additional links for this episode:ZK Hack IRL Istanbul wrap article ZK Hack Tweet announcing the winners. Sign up here for ZK Hack IV Online updates EigenLayer EigenLayer: The Restaking Collective by EigenLayer Team Parachains' Protocol Overview - reference to Fishermen Episode 217: Information Theory & Blockchain with Sreeram Kannan ZK7: Hyperscale Data Availa

In this week’s episode, Anna takes a look back at the last 6 years of the Zero Knowledge Podcast, how it came to be and the journey the show has been on since that very first episode in 2017. Anna reviews the highs and lows of the show, touching on episodes which made a profound impact on her own journey in the ZK space, as well as episodes she wouldn’t rush to listen to again! Discover key show learnings, how the zkSummit formed and take a trip down memory lane in the 300th episode of Zero Knowledge Podcast. To check out all the ZK Podcast episodes mentioned in this episode, visit the zeroknowledge.fm website here Check out one of the earliest zkSummit talks on the very first event: Zero knowledge proofs intro with Str4d (Zcash) The full zkSummit Playlist Sign up here for ZK Hack IV Online updates If you like what we do: Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree Subscribe to our podcast newsletter Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Catch us on YouTube

In this week's episode, Anna chats with Alex Gluchowski, CEO of Matter Labs & co-creator of the zkSync network. They catch up on the zkSync project since it launched in Feb 2023. They dive into recent initiatives like the ZK Stack framework, Hyperchains, and the ZK Credo mission statement. They also explore the upcoming Boojum proof system upgrade planned for zkSync Era and discuss the future of the zkSync project as a whole.Here’s some additional links for this episode:Introducing the ZK Stack Introduction to HyperchainsMatter Labs Era Boojum GitHubzkSync Era: Everything you need to know about ZK Credo, ZK Stack, & Boojum Upgrade Episode 72: zkSNARKs for Scale with Matter LabsEpisode 116: zkSync and Redshift: Matter Labs updateEpisode 175: zkEVM & zkPorter with Matter Labs Introducing zkSync: the missing link to mass adoption of Ethereum The different types of ZK-EVMs by Vitalik ButerinDifferent types of layer 2sL2BEAT emailwallet.org prove.email Check out the latest in ZK Jobs on our Jobs Board