Zero Knowledge History of Plonk, Noir, and the building of Aztec 3
Broken Cryptography
- Zac Williamson's initial cryptography protocol was flawed.
- Jens Groth reviewed it and pointed out its vulnerabilities.
The Birth of Plonk
- Zac asked Ariel Gabizon for help with a shifting problem in his Poseidon hash ZK protocol.
- Gabizon solved the problem, leading to the creation of Plonk.
Plonk's Permutation Argument
- Plonk's permutation argument efficiently proves correct wire connections in a snark circuit.
- This is crucial for universal snarks without per-circuit trusted setups.
In this week’s episode, host Anna Rose sits down with Zac Williamson, the CEO of Aztec. Anna and Zac dive deep into the history of Plonk, one of the most important proving systems to emerge in the last 5 years. Zac explains how the initial ideas came to be, how it was developed with co-author Ariel Gabizon, and how the system has evolved over time, branching out into many different iterations of Plonk, leading up to his recent work on Goblin Plonk.
The conversation also touches on Aztec's cutting-edge technology stack, including their Noir zkDSL and their planned private programmable L2, Aztec 3. Zac shares his insights on the state of ZK applications and folding schemes, and provides a glimpse into the future of the ZK space.
Here’s some additional links for this episode:
- StarkWare Sessions 23 | Privacy Preserving Smart Contract Architectures | Zac Williamson
- High Level Overview of Goblin Plonk: lazy recursive proof composition by Zac Williamson
- Spec for Goblin Plonk: lazy recursive proof composition by Zac Williamson
- Goblin Plonk Slides by Zac Williamson
- Episode 75: Exploring Aztec with Zac Williamson
- Episode 112: Dive into Plonk!
- Episode 176: Zk-zk-rollup & zk.money with Zac and Joe from Aztec
- Episode 236: Aztec Connect and Private DeFi with Charlie and Joe
- Episode 237: Exploring ZK Research with Jens Groth
- Episode 242: Halo 2 with Daira Hopwood and Str4d
- ZK Whiteboard Sessions – Interview with Ariel Gabizon on The PLONK Origin Story and Roadmap
- ZK8: Hyperplonk: PLONK without FFTs and with high degree gates - Benedikt Bünz
Check out the ZK Jobs Board here: ZK Jobs. Find your next job working in ZK!
Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.
Interested in building private applications? Check out Aleo’s programming language called Leo that enables non-cryptographers to harness the power of ZKPs to deploy decentralized exchanges, hidden information games, regulated stablecoins, and more. Visit http://developer.aleo.org.
For questions, join their Discord at aleo.org/discord.
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
Read transcript