Zero Knowledge

Summary This 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’ GitHub Introducing Reth by Paradigm Reth GitHub Episode 224: Foundry with Georgios Konstantopoulos Loom Network CryptoZombies Geth: Ethereum Full BSC Node Guide: How to Run BNB Smart Chain Nodes GitHub: flashbots:mev-geth Arbitrum The Definitive Guide to Sequenci

In this week’s episode, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) and Guillermo (https://twitter.com/GuilleAngeris) catch up with Justin Thaler (https://twitter.com/SuccinctJT), Associate Professor at Georgetown (https://people.cs.georgetown.edu/jthaler/) and Research Partner at a16z (https://a16zcrypto.com/team/justin-thaler/). The group dive into a handful of points from Justin’s ‘17 Misconceptions about SNARKs’ (https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/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 (https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/17-misconce

In this week’s episode, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) and Kobi (https://twitter.com/kobigurk) chat with Gal Arnon (https://galarnon42.github.io/), Ph.D student from the Weizmann Institute of Science (https://weizmann.ac.il/pages/) & Giacomo Fenzi (https://twitter.com/GiacomoFenzi), Ph.D. student in the COMPSEC Lab (https://compsec.epfl.ch/) at EPFL (https://epfl.ch/). Gal and Giacomo are amongst the co-authors of ‘STIR: Reed–Solomon Proximity Testing with Fewer Queries’ (https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/390) 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,

A quick announcement for ZK Hack Krakow, happening from May 17-19 2024 in Krakow (!). In the spirit of ZK Hack Lisbon and ZK Hack Istanbul, ZK Hack Krakow will be hosting hackers from all over the world to join us for a weekend of building and experimenting with zk tech. Sponsors for this edition are Mina, O1Labs, Aleph Zero, Polygon, Scroll, Avail, Nethermind and more. If you are interested, apply as a hacker - there will be prizes and bounties to be won, new friends and collaborators to meet and great workshops to get you up to date on ZK tooling. All happening May 17-19 2024 https://www.zkkrakow.com/

In this week’s episode, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) and Brendan Farmer (https://twitter.com/_bfarmer) catch up with Ben Fisch (https://twitter.com/benafisch), CEO of Espresso Systems (https://www.espressosys.com/). 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 (https://zeroknowledge.fm/222-2/) Episode 139: Findora with Benedikt Bunz and Ben Fisch (https://zeroknowledge.fm/139-2/) Episode 88: Accumulators with Ben Fisch (https://zeroknowledge.fm/88-2/) CAPE: Configurable Asset Privacy for Ethereum (https://medium.com/@espressosys/cape-configurable-asset-privacy-for-ethereum-71919935643b) CA

In this week’s episode, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) catches up with Jordi Baylina (https://twitter.com/jbaylina), OG Ethereum contributor and Polygon zkEVM (https://polygon.technology/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 zkEVM (https://polygon.technology/polygon-zkevm) Episode 194: zkEVM with Jordi & David from Hermez (https://zeroknowledge.fm/episode-194-zkevm-with-jordi-david-from-hermez/) Episode 145: Circom & Hermez with Jordi Baylina (https://zeroknowledge.fm/145-2/) Episode 3

In this week’s episode, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) and Nico (https://twitter.com/nico_mnbl) chat with Chelsea Komlo (https://twitter.com/chelseakomlo), Chief Scientist for the Zcash Foundation (https://zfnd.org/) and member of the Cryptography, Security, and Privacy lab at the University of Waterloo (https://crysp.uwaterloo.ca/). 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 (https://djao.math.uwaterloo.ca/wiki/images/f/ff/Space-2018.pdf) Efficient Signature

This week, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) and Tarun (https://twitter.com/tarunchitra) chat with Niraj Pant (https://twitter.com/niraj) and Anish Agnihotri (https://twitter.com/_anishagnihotri) from Ritual (https://ritual.net/). 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 (https://zeroknowledge.fm/216-2/) Episode 246: Adversarial Machine Learning Research with Florian Tramèr (https://zeroknowledge.fm/246-2/) Episode 314: Succinct’s Platform, Prover Network and SP1 (https://zeroknowledge.fm/314-2/) FrenRug Website (https://www.frenrug.com/) Mistral 7B by Jiang, Sablayrolles, Mensch, Bamford, Chaplot, De Las Casas, Bressand, Lengyel, Lample, Saulnier, Lavaud, Lachaux, Stock, Le Scao, Lavril, Wang, Lacroix

In this week’s episode, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) and Nico (https://twitter.com/nico_mnbl) chat with Alin Tomescu (https://twitter.com/alinush), founding team member and Head of Cryptography at Aptos Labs (https://twitter.com/AptosLabs). 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 (https://zeroknowledge.fm/302-2/) Episode 156: Stateless Validation with Alin Tomescu (https://zeroknowledge.fm/156-2/) Episode 227: Move & Sui with Sam Blackshear from Mysten Labs (https://zeroknowledge.fm/228-2/) Aptos Developer Documentation (https://aptos.dev/) OpenPubkey: Augmenting OpenID Connect with User held Signing Keys by Heilman, Mugnier, Filippidis, Goldberg, Lipman, Marcus, Milano, Pre

This week’s episode is a little different from the usual and is split into two parts with Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) and Kobi (https://twitter.com/kobigurk) 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 (https://twitter.com/nico_mnbl) 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 (https://jobsboard.zeroknowledge.fm/) ZK Hack Website (https://zkhack.dev/) Episode 211: It’s a wrap! ZK Hack Takeaways & What’s Next! (https://zeroknowledge.fm/211-2/) ZK HACK IV - Overview & Workshop Introductions: map featured at 1m28s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttKs4esfTM0

In this week’s episode, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) and Tarun (https://twitter.com/tarunchitra) catch up with Uma Roy (https://twitter.com/pumatheuma), CEO and cofounder of Succinct (https://succinct.xyz/). 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 (https://blog.celestia.org/introducing-blobstream/) Succinct Labs SP1 GitHub (https://succinctlabs.github.io/sp1/) ZK Jobs Board (https://jobsboard.zeroknowledge.fm/) Episode 255: Verifying Consensus On-Chain with Succinct (https://zeroknowledge.fm/255-2/) Episode 286: Paris 2023 Recap with Uma, Zaki and Tarun (https://zeroknowledge.fm/286-2/) Alpha Succinc

In this week’s episode, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) chats with Omer Shlomovits (https://twitter.com/OmerShlomovits) and Yuval Domb (https://twitter.com/yuval_domb) from Ingonyama (https://www.ingonyama.com/). 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 ZenGo (https://zeroknowledge.fm/158-2/) Episode 258: Ultrasound Money & VRFs with Justin Drake (https://zeroknowledge.fm/258-2/) The first ever SNARK proving ASIC tweet by drakefjustin (https://twitter.com/drakefjustin/status/1755929540700807211) Episode 266: ZK Hardware Sessions with Zprize Pt. 1 (https://zeroknowledge.fm/266-2/) E

In this week’s episode, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) and Tarun (https://twitter.com/tarunchitra) interview Brian Weickmann (https://twitter.com/Bmwball56) & Richard Liang (https://twitter.com/richardzliang) from the ZKP2P (https://zkp2p.xyz/) 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 (https://zkp2p.xyz/) zkSummit11 (https://www.zksummit.com/) Axiom’s Halo2 library (https://github.com/axiom-crypto/halo2-lib) Episode 302: ZK for web2 interop with zkLogin & ZK Email (https://zeroknowledge.fm/302-2/) ZK Email (https://prove.email/) 0xPA

In this week’s episode, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) and Guillermo (https://twitter.com/GuilleAngeris) chat with Yaz Khoury (https://twitter.com/Yazanator) and Ismail Khoffi (https://twitter.com/KreuzUQuer) from Celestia (https://twitter.com/celestiaorg). 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 (https://zeroknowledge.fm/151-2/) Episode 208: Digging into Data Availability with Ismail Khoffi from Celestia (https://zeroknowledge.fm/208-2/) Episode 268: A Rollup-Centric Future & Sovereign Ch

In this week’s episode, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) and Tarun (https://twitter.com/tarunchitra) chat with Noam Nisan (https://twitter.com/noamnisan), Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (https://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~noam/), Principle Researcher at StarkWare Industries (https://starkware.co) 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 (https://starkware.co/resource/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-

** This episode uses visual aids and slides throughout, you may want to check out the video version here (https://youtu.be/UKiQ6jTsv4E)** In this week’s episode, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) and Nico Mohnblatt (https://twitter.com/nico_mnbl) from Geometry Research (https://geometry.dev/about) host a ZK Jargon Decoder episode. Based on Nico’s ZK Jargon Decoder Website (https://nmohnblatt.github.io/zk-jargon-decoder/), 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 (https://www.youtube.com/@zeroknowledgefm). This ZK Jargon Decoder Session is also very well complimented by the ZK Whiteboard sessions (https://zkhack.dev/whiteboard/). N

In this week’s episode, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) catches up with Prabal Banerjee (https://twitter.com/prabalbanerjee), co-founder of Avail (https://www.availproject.org/). 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 (https://polygon.technology/) Fraud and Data Availability Proofs: Maximising Light Client Security and Scaling Blockchains with Dishonest Majorities by Al-Bassam, Sonnino and Buterin (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1809.09044.pdf)

This week, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) caught up on all things Aleo (https://aleo.org/) with Howard Wu (https://twitter.com/1HowardWu) co-founder of the Aleo Network & Alex Pruden (https://twitter.com/apruden08) executive director of the Aleo Foundation (https://aleo.org/post/announcing-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 Wu (https://zeroknowledge.fm/144-2/) Episode 38: Intro to zkSNARKs with Howard Wu (https://zeroknowledge.fm/38-2/) zk-creds: Flexible Anonymous Credentials from zkSNARKs and Existing Identity Infrastructure by Rosenberg, White, Garman, and Miers (https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/878.pdf) zPass by Aleo (https://zpass.aleo.org/) C

In this week’s episode, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) and cohosts Guillermo (https://twitter.com/GuilleAngeris), Kobi (https://twitter.com/kobigurk), Nico (https://twitter.com/nico_mnbl) and Tarun (https://twitter.com/tarunchitra) 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 (https://hopin.com/events/zkhackiv-1). For the latest news on the event check out the zhhack.dev/zkhackIV (https://zkhack.dev/zkhackIV/) website. Aleo (http://aleo.org/) 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

In this week’s episode, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) catches up in person with Guillermo (https://twitter.com/GuilleAngeris), Tarun (https://twitter.com/tarunchitra) and Alex Evans (https://twitter.com/alexhevans) 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: Episode 265: Where ZK and ML intersect with Yi Sun and Daniel Kang (https://zeroknowledge.fm/265-2/) Episode 256: New ZK Use Cases with Dan Boneh (https://zeroknowledge.fm/256-2/) Episode 260: ZK in 2023 with Kobi, Guillermo, and Tarun (https://zeroknowledge.fm/260-2/) Episode 302: ZK for web2 int