AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Ron’s Crypto Journey
- Ron Rothblum started in low-level crypto engineering but disliked it and moved to theory with a strong passion for the underlying math.
- A foundational cryptography course by Odette Goldreich was the turning point for his cryptography interest.
Theory vs Practice in SNARKs
- In theory, succinct arguments like SNARKs were solved by 1992 using PCPs and Fiat-Shamir transform.
- Practical feasibility required years of improvements in speed and prover efficiency.
Power of PCPs
- Probabilistically Checkable Proofs (PCPs) allow verifying correctness by checking only a few random bits of a large proof.
- PCPs revolutionized complexity theory and are foundational to modern proof systems like IOPs.