Zero Knowledge

In this week’s episode, Anna and Guillermo catch up with Henry de Valence from Penumbra. They discuss his thoughts on requirements for adoption of privacy systems and how these led to him to develop Penumbra. They explore how Penumbra aims to use privacy features not as ‘nice to haves' within the system, but rather as essential components that offer a new paradigm for how to think about DeFi in a Multichain Ecosystem. Here are some additional links for this episode:Episode 126: Crypto libraries, Zcash’s Zebra and contact tracing with Henry de Valence Henry de Valence GitHubPenumbra TwitterInformal SystemsUniswap V3 IBCTendermintRustGithubGitFind the Anoma Whitepaper here. ZK Jobs Board – has a fresh batch of open roles from ZK-focused projects. Find your next opportunity working in ZK!Today’s episode is sponsored by Aleo. Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup. If you’re interested in building private applications then check out Aleo’s programming language called Leo. Visit leo-lang.org to start building. You can also join Aleo’s incentivized testnet3 by downloading and running a snarkOS node. No sign-up is necessary to participate. 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 newsletterFollow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramCatch us on YoutubeHead to the ZK Community ForumSupport our Gitcoin Grant Read transcript

This week, Anna and Tarun chat with Florian Tramèr, Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich. They discuss his earlier work on side channel attacks on privacy blockchains, as well as his academic focus on Machine Learning (ML) and adversarial research. They define some key ML terms, tease out some of the nuances of ML training and models, chat zkML and other privacy environments where ML can be trained, and look at why the security around ML will be important as these models become increasingly used in production. Here are some additional links for this episode:Episode 228: Catch-up at DevConnect AMS with Tarun, Guillermo and BrendanFlorian Tramèr’s GithubFlorian Tramèr’s Publications & PapersETH Zurich Single Secret Leader Election by Dan Boneh, Saba Eskandarian, Lucjan Hanzlik, and Nicola GrecoGasToken: A Journey Through Blockchain Resource Arbitrage by Tramèr, Daian, Breidenbach and JuelsEnter the Hydra: Towards Principled Bug Bounties and Exploit-Resistant Smart Contracts by Tramèr, Daian, Breidenbach and JuelsRonin Bridge Hack – Community Alert: Ronin Validators Compromised InstaHide: Instance-hiding Schemes for Private Distributed Learning, Huang et al. 2020.Is Private Learning Possible with Instance Encoding? OpenAI's GPT-3 modelOpenAI's GPT-2 modelOpenAI's GPT-2 modelThe Part-Time Parliament, Lamport, 1998.You Autocomplete Me: Poisoning Vulnerabilities in Neural Code CompletionZK Whiteboard Sessions – as part of ZK Hack and powered by Polygon – a new series of educational videos that will help you get onboarded into the concepts and terms that we talk about on the ZK front. ZK Jobs Board – has a fresh batch of open roles from ZK-focused projects. Find your next opportunity working in ZK!Today’s episode is sponsored by Mina Protocol.With Mina’s zero knowledge smart contracts – or zkApps – developers can create apps that offer privacy, security, and verifiability for your users. Head to minaprotocol.com/zkpodcast to learn about their developer bootcamps and open grants.If you like what we do:Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree Subscribe to our podcast newsletterFollow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramCatch us on YoutubeHead to the ZK Community ForumSupport our Gitcoin Grant Read transcript

In this episode, Anna explores the topic of the recent OFAC sanctions against Tornado Cash with 2 interviews: One is with TuongVy Le, Head of Regulatory and Policy at Bain Capital Crypto, who previously worked at the SEC and the other is with Michael Mosier, General Council at Espresso Systems, who used to work at the Treasury, within FinCen and at OFAC itself. For some context: On August 8th 2022, OFAC, a US government department issued sanctions against Tornado Cash, a privacy protocol that uses zero knowledge proofs to provide on-chain privacy. It was the first time that OFAC had sanctioned a set of smart contracts and a decentralized entity for which there's no clear ownership. This is an event which has had a ripple effect throughout the zk ecosystem and will be the topic explored in a series with different members of the community. In these two initial interviews, Anna explores what actually happened legally, what a sanction is, what kind of a tool is this, why it may have been issued and what problem arose from the way it was issued and how this might impact future understanding of zero knowledge tech through a legal lens._NOTE: Since our recording OFAC has released an FAQ to clarify some of the legal questions raised in our interviews: https://home.treasury.gov/taxonomy/term/1546 _Here are some additional links for this episode:Episode 111: Mixers with Tornado.cash Episode 166: Coin Center’s Peter Van Valkenburgh on regulation Episode 191: ZKPs & the Dichotomy of Privacy vs Transparency with Josh & Jill Chainanalysis: Crypto Mixer Usage Reaches All-time Highs in 2022, With Nation State Actors and Cybercriminals Contributing Significant VolumeCircle and Coinbase Restrict Movement of USDC Funds From Tornado Cash Addresses Following Sanctions Rep. Emmer demands an explanation of OFAC’s Tornado Cash sanction from Sec. Yellen What is OFAC? OFAC Press Release on Tornado CashOFAC Identifies Associated Digital Currency Addresses for the First Time Treasury Sanctions Russia-Based Hydra Blender.io Sanctions The Bank Secrecy Act 311 Patriot ActFinCEN: Financial Crimes Enforcement NetworkApplication of FinCEN’s Regulations to Certain Business Models Involving Convertible Virtual Currencies ZK Whiteboard Sessions – as part of ZK Hack and powered by Polygon – a new series of educational videos that will help you get onboarded into the concepts and terms that we talk about on the ZK front. ZK Jobs Board has a fresh batch of open roles from ZK-focused projects. Find your next opportunity working in ZK!Today’s episode is sponsored by Polygon.Introducing Polygon zkEVM. Polygon’s vision for zkEVM is simple: developers can deploy any Ethereum smart contract to a Layer 2 and benefit from the scaling power of ZK proofs. Public testnet is coming soon! If you’d like to learn more about Polygon zkEVM and stay updated on the latest - fill out the form here.If you like what we do:Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree Subscribe to our podcast newsletterFollow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramCatch us on YoutubeHead to the ZK Community ForumSupport our Gitcoin Grant Read transcript

In this episode, Anna and Guillermo chat with David Tse about his career and research spanning from early Networking, Mobile Networking, P2P, all the way up to his work on formalizing Blockchain systems. Along the way, they touch on topics like 'The Price of Anarchy', David’s Prism work, his work with the Ethereum Foundation and his new project Babylon. Here are some links for this episode:Episode 217: Information Theory & Blockchain with Sreeram Kannan The Price of AnarchyBabylonPrismBram Cohen’s Twitter Everything is a Race and Nakamoto Always WinsThree Attacks on Proof of Stake EthereumEbb-and-Flow Protocols: A Resolution of the Availability-Finality DilemmaMore of David Tse's PapersA Mathematical Theory of Communication - C. E. Shannon 1948Hidden Hamiltonian Cycle Recovery via Linear ProgrammingConcentration Inequalities and Model Selection - P. MassartJohn Tsitsiklis BioFundamentals of Wireless Communication - David Tse 2005Qualcomm WebsiteCosmoverse Event Link Devcon Event Link ZK Whiteboard Sessions – as part of ZK Hack and powered by Polygon – a new series of educational videos that will help you get onboarded into the concepts and terms that we talk about on the ZK front. ZK Jobs Board – if you are looking to find a new job, or if you are a team hiring, we have a fresh batch of open roles at ZK focused projects. This is a great place to learn about relevant projects and the types of roles they are looking for. Today’s episode is sponsored by Aleo. Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.If you’re interested in building private applications then check out Aleo’s programming language called Leo. Leo enables non-cryptographers to harness the power of ZKPs. Visit leo-lang.org to start building.You can also join Aleo’s incentivized testnet3 by downloading and running a snarkOS node. No sign-up is necessary to participate.For questions, join their Discord.If you like what we do:Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree Subscribe to our podcast newsletterFollow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramCatch us on YoutubeHead to the ZK Community ForumSupport our Gitcoin Grant Read transcript

In this week's episode, Anna and Tarun revisit the topic of MEV with Chris Hager from Flashbots & Alex Stokes from the Ethereum Foundation. In this episode, they tease out more of the nuances around MEV and how the field around it has evolved in the last year or so. The team explores what the MEV space could look like after the Merge, the PBS (Proposer Builder Separation) concept, what each role in the MEV landscape will do and the MEV-Boost architecture. They also chat about using cryptographic solutions to prevent some kinds of MEV and some recent work that Tarun released on the topic of MEV, as well as future ideas around MEV aim to democratize or even share the searchers rewards.Here are some links for this episode:Episode 168: Flashbots with Phil Daian and Stephane GosselinEpisode 188: Analyzing Osmosis & Preventing MEV with Sunny and Dev Episode 216: A Dip into the Mempool & MEV with Project BlancAlex Stokes BlogFlashbots MEV ResearchFlashbots GithubFlashbots DiscordFlashbots Docs: New to MEV?Flashbots DocsTarun’s recent work on MEV: Improving Proof of Stake Economic Security via MEV RedistributionHere is more of Tarun's recent work: Towards a Theory of Maximal Extractable Value I: Constant Function Market Makers The Downside of Sanctioning Tornado CashZK Whiteboard Sessions – as part of ZK Hack and powered by Polygon – a new series of educational videos that will help you get onboarded into the concepts and terms that we talk about on the ZK front. ZK Jobs Board – if you are looking to find a new job, or if you are a team hiring, we have a fresh batch of open roles at ZK focused projects. This is a great place to learn about relevant projects and the types of roles they are looking for. Today’s episode is sponsored by Polygon.Introducing Polygon zkEVM. Polygon’s vision for zkEVM is simple: developers can deploy any Ethereum smart contract to a Layer 2 and benefit from the scaling power of ZK proofs. Public testnet is coming soon! If you’d like to learn more about Polygon zkEVM and stay updated on the latest - fill out the form here.If you like what we do:Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree Subscribe to our podcast newsletterFollow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramCatch us on YoutubeHead to the ZK Community ForumSupport our Gitcoin Grant Read transcript

In this week’s episode, Anna explores Halo 2 with Daira Hopwood and Str4d, cryptographic engineers at Electric Coin Company. They explored what new ideas Halo introduced and how Halo 2 built on these ideas, adding optimisations such as adding Plonk-ish arithmetization to take what was a breakthrough to a production ready proving system. This episode was recorded at Zcon3 in Vegas. Here are some links for this episode:Episode on HaloEpisode recorded at Zcon0 ZK Whiteboard SessionsEpisode with Sean BoweHalo 2 explainedJustin Drake on Polynomial CommitmentsStr4d’s talk at ZCon3 Daira’s talk at ZCon3Ying Tong’s talk at ZCon3 Pratyush Mishra at Zcon3The halo2 Book: Proving System The halo2 Book: Protocol The halo2 Book: SinsemillaCheck out ZK Whiteboard Sessions, produced by ZK Hack & powered by Polygon, a weekly educational series of interviews with ZK experts on the most important concepts and building blocks in ZK. If you are looking to jump into ZK professionally, check out the ZK Jobs Board to find job posts from some of the top teams working in ZK – like Aleo, Anoma and Mina. If you’re looking to hire, be sure to add your jobs as well! More at ZK Jobs Board. Today’s episode is sponsored by Manta Network.Manta is the privacy hub for web3. By leveraging zero-knowledge proofs, Manta brings on-chain privacy to any crypto asset. Manta is looking for engineers passionate about cryptography and bringing convenient privacy protection to all of web3. Visit [https://careers.manta.network]([https://careers.manta.network) to apply.If you like what we do:Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree Subscribe to our podcast newsletterFollow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramCatch us on YoutubeHead to the ZK Community ForumSupport our Gitcoin Grant Read transcript

In this week’s episode, Anna chats with Vaibhav Chellani, a bridge builder and the co-founder of Socket. They explore what makes up the components of a bridge, the types of bridges, and then look at their framework for analysing the security trade-offs of different bridge architectures. This is an important topic, since at present, there are more and more bridges coming online to connect all the different chains together. And with these come a number of new bugs, hacks and exploits. This episode gives us an overview on how to think about bridges. Here are some links for this episode:Episode 223: Connecting Cosmos and Ethereum with Gravity BridgeEpisode 226: Interoperability with Sergey Gorbunov from Axelar Episode 229: Going Cross-Chain with Polkadot’s XCM Episode 230: Designing Optimistic Interoperability with Nomad Socket bungee exchangeThe Bridge Risk Framework SeminarVitalik’s ‘Future Multi-chain, Not Cross-chain'Check out ZK Whiteboard Sessions, produced by ZK Hack & powered by Polygon, a weekly educational series of interviews with ZK experts on the most important concepts and building blocks in ZK. Also, zkSummit is happening in Berlin on September 15th! Apply to attend here.If you like what we do:Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree Subscribe to our podcast newsletterFollow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramCatch us on YoutubeHead to the ZK Community ForumSupport our Gitcoin Grant Read transcript

In this week’s episode, Anna and Kobi chat with Shumo Chu, co-founder of Manta Network. They discuss the origin story of the project and how they aim to bring privacy to web3. They explore the unique accessibility that Polkadot parachains enable, the work they do on building ZK tooling and libraries for the general ZK community. They then take a look at their plans for a multi-asset shielded pool and the future they have planned for Manta projects and more. Here are some links for this episode:Episode 226: Interoperability with Sergey Gorbunov from AxelarEpisode 172: ZK languages with Alex OzdemirManta NetworkManta: a Plug and Play Private DeFi StackDolphin TestnetZK GarageBlog post: Enabling multi-asset privacy on Anoma plookup: A simplified polynomial protocol for lookup tablesCirC: Compiler infrastructure for proof systems, software verification, and moreCheck out ZK Whiteboard Sessions, produced by ZK Hack & powered by Polygon, a weekly educational series of interviews with ZK experts on the most important concepts and building blocks in ZK. Today’s episode is sponsored by Anoma.Anoma is a suite of protocols that enable self-sovereign coordination. Anoma's first fractal instance, Namada, is planned for later in 2022, and it focuses on enabling shielded transfers for any assets with a few second transaction latency and near zero fees.Visit anoma.net to learn more!If you like what we do:Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree Subscribe to our podcast newsletterFollow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramCatch us on YoutubeHead to the ZK Community ForumSupport our Gitcoin Grant Read transcript

In this week’s episode, Anna catches up with Zaki Manian from Sommelier and Dean Tribble from Agoric. They check-in with the latest project news, recap about the UST collapse, and look into IST - Inter Stable Token - a project by the Agoric team that aims to become the Cosmos native multi collateral stablecoin. Here are some links for this episode:Ep 218: Hardened JS and the Architecture of Agoric with Dean TribbleEp 201: DeFi’s Multichain Future with Zaki Manian from SommelierEp 174: Through the Cosmos Stargate UpgradeEp 108: Catch up with Zaki Manian from TendermintInter.TradeGaunletAgoricAgoric Signs on Gauntlet for Inter Protocol Stablecoin Risk Optimization on CosmosWe're excited to announce ZK Whiteboard Sessions – a weekly educational video series focused on the building blocks of ZK. Produced by ZK Hack and powered by Polygon.zkSummit 8 is happening in Berlin on Sept 15th during Berlin Blockchain Week!Apply to attend: https://www.zksummit.com/Today’s episode is sponsored by Aleo. Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain – if you’re building private applications then check out Aleo’s programming language called Leo which enables non-cryptographers to harness the power of ZKPs. Visit leo-lang.org to start building. You can also participate in Aleo’s incentivized testnet 3 by downloading and running a snarkOS node. No sign-up is necessary to participate. For questions, join their Discord at aleo.org/discordIf you like what we do:Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree Subscribe to our podcast newsletterFollow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramCatch us on YoutubeHead to the ZK Community ForumSupport our Gitcoin Grant Read transcript

No full episode this week. Just a quick message to let you know about the upcoming zkSummit 8 - happening in Berlin Sept 15 2022. Apply here: https://www.zksummit.com/ If you like what we do: Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree Subscribe to our podcast newsletter Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm Head to the ZK Community Forum Support our Gitcoin Grant