Eli Ben-Sasson: StarkWare – Productizing zk-STARKs to Provide Blockchain Scalability and Privacy

This past year, we have witnessed what some are calling a “Cambrian Explosion” in zero-knowledge proof systems. New proof systems based on a variety of cryptographic assumptions are popping up every week. And while zero-knowledge systems are known for their privacy-preserving characteristics, they have proven particularly useful for scaling blockchains through off-chain computations.

We're joined by Eli Ben Sasson, Co-founder and Cheif Scientist in the East at Starkware. His company is developing a full proof-stack, which leverages STARKs. Pioneered by Eli, STARKs are zero-knowledge cryptographic proofs, which are succinct, transparent, and post-quantum secure. StarkWare has demonstrated how zkSTARKs may be leveraged to provide off-chain scalability by generating proofs of computational integrity which may be verified on-chain.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Eli's trajectory and transition from academia to the startup world
• The origin story of Starkware and the founding team
• The current explosion of zero-knowledge proof research
• An overview of zero-knowledge proof systems and how they work
• What are STARKs and what are their properties
• How STARKs are different from SNARKs and Bulletproofs
• What are zk-Rollups and how they are used by StarkWare to achieve scalability
• The StarkDEX experiment and scalability benefits it had demonstrated
• The issue of data availability with layer-2 scaling solutions
• StarkWare's business model and the solutions they are building for customers

Episode links:

• StarkWare
• StarkWare resources
• StarkWare blog
• StarkWare Twitter
• StarkWare Sessions conference videos
• Epicenter Podcast SFBW Week Meetup
• DeFi Hackathon sponsored by Cosmos
• SF Blockchain Week 2019 (use the code EPICENTER for 20% off tickets)
• Macro.WTF

Sponsors:

• Vaultoro: Trade gold to Bitcoin instantly and securely starting at just 1mg - http://vaultoro.com
• B9Lab: Level up and become a Solidity smart contract auditor – 5% off the with the code EPICENTER - https://solidified.b9lab.com/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/310