In this week’s episode, Anna and Robert Habermeier chat with Pratyush Mishra, co-author of the Arkworks toolkit. Arkworks is a collection of Rust libraries designed to simplify development with SNARKs, both for developing high-level application circuits and building custom SNARK implementations. Pratyush lays out what possibilities and trade-offs Arkworks offers, diving into the details of the Rust implementation and why it is the best language for developing cryptographic primitives. Anna, Rob and Pratyush then branch out into the philosophical and practical questions of open-source and blockchain development. Here are a few links to Arkworks and the topics they discussed: Arkworks GitHub page and Telegram group. Pratyush’s GitHub, Twitter and Berkeley pages. Bellman and Libsnark, some of the other libraries that are similar to Arkworks. The Celo and Mina protocols, two major projects using Arkworks. Here is a basic explainer of what projects like Arkworks are trying to do and why it’s useful, with a particular focus on ZoKrates, one of the languages Pratyush mentioned. Intros to Circom, Leo and Zinc, some of the higher level languages. An earlier episode with Robert Habermeier about the work he does on Polkadot. Be sure to subscribe to the zkMesh Newsletter - a monthly rundown of the latest in decentralised privacy-preserving technologies, privacy protocol development and zero knowledge systems research. Put together by Anna & Mikerah (HashCloak). Thank you to this week’s sponsor Least Authority. Least Authority is a security consulting and product development company known for pushing the limits on how to build privacy-respecting solutions. They are a team of security researchers, open source developers, privacy advocates and cryptographers. They have developed an end-to-end encrypted cloud storage product that minimizes the collection of any data related to its users, called PrivateStorage. PrivateStorage implements privacy and security by design, not by policy. PrivateStorage is based on Tahoe-LAFS an open source distributed file store PrivateStorage is launching in the second half of this year. Visit PrivateStorage.io to learn more and to sign up to be notified about its release. *If you like what we do: * Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Catch us on Youtube Read up on the r/ZKPodcast subreddit Give us feedback! https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKPatreon Donate through coinbase.commerce *Or directly here: * ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz ZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this week’s episode, Anna and James Prestwich chat with Phil Daian and Stephane Gosselin from the Flashbots project. Flashbots is a research and development organization formed to mitigate the negative externalities and existential risks posed by miner-extractable value (MEV) to smart-contract blockchains They talk about the Flashbots organization and mission as well as the evolving opportunities and dangers lurking in the mempool. Miner extractable value (MEV) is a measure devised to study consensus security by modeling the profit a miner (or validator, sequencer, or other privileged protocol actor) can make through their ability to arbitrarily include, exclude, or re-order transactions from the blocks they produce. Here are some links to previous episodes, the project & MEV: Discussing Plasma and Storage Rent with Karl Floersch and Phil Daian Storage rent with Phil Daian Monsters in the Mempool with Dan Robinson from Paradigm on Zero Knowledge Podcast Flash Boys 2.0: Frontrunning, Transaction Reordering, and Consensus Instability in Decentralized Exchanges Flashbots: Frontrunning the MEV crisis on the Flashbots blog Flashbots post on Ethresear.ch Flashbots Flashbots Alpha MEV research roadmap Flashbots MEV Fellowship - collective research process MEV Roast Calendar In case you missed the announcement - zkSessions: DeFi+Privacy has been postponed until Feb 22. Grab your free spot here -> https://hopin.com/events/zksessions-defi-and-privacy Thank you to this week’s sponsor Optimism PBC. Optimism PBC is a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) building the Optimistic Ethereum Network and the Optimistic Virtual Machine to keep Ethereum half-full. They are calling all curious hackers and seasoned engineers to Come work on the cutting edge of the most interesting problems to push the limits of blockchains, VMs and compilers. No blockchain experience required! You'll work alongside global teams that are defining completely novel businesses and games that need our software to scale. If you're a developer who loves to see your code getting used by innovators around the world, then Optimism is your gateway to paradise. Please reach out to join@optimism.io if you're interested in becoming part of this compassionate, hard-working team! People of all backgrounds are encouraged to apply. *If you like what we do: * Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Catch us on Youtube Read up on the r/ZKPodcast subreddit Give us feedback! -https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKPatreon Donate through coinbase.commerce *Or directly here: * ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a BTC: 1233mRsCJ9XK6XmCGozaZ49exxvzXLt3PA ZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this week’s episode, Anna & Tarun take a step further into the NFT/Art space and chat with 2 content creators/entrepreneurs Andre Anjos (RAC) and Trevor McFedries (Brud) who are both making work that intersects with NFTs, crypto & other novel blockchain concepts. They discuss their respective works, and explore the new ways in which creators & influencers can engage with Blockchain tech and NFTs. They also try to imagine what living a digital reality actually means for the creation and consumption, or ownership of content. Here are a few of the links and projects mentioned: Dieter Shirley from Flow on ZKPodcast Alex from Rarible on ZKPodcast Headless Brands Michela's instagram Zora Superrare friend with benefits - fwb.help RAC token on Zora Check out and sign up for the zkSessions event happening on Feb 15th! https://hopin.com/events/zksessions-defi-and-privacy It's free and focused on DeFi & Privacy Thanks to this week’s sponsor Aave! Aave is an open source, decentralised non-custodial liquidity protocol on Ethereum. With Aave, users can participate as depositors meaning they provide liquidity to earn a passive income. or they can also act as borrowers to borrow in an overcollateralized way or undercollateralised way (think: one-block liquidity Flash Loan). Aave is decentralised and community-governed and has an ecosystem grants program for anyone building anything that contributes to Aave! DeFi-staked NFT collectibles game Aavegotchi originated as an Aave ecosystem grant. To learn more about the grant program visit aave.com and find the link to apply for the Aave grants program here! *If you like what we do: * Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Catch us on Youtube Read up on the r/ZKPodcast subreddit Give us feedback! -https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKPatreon Donate through coinbase.commerce *Or directly here: * ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz ZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this week’s episode, Anna & Josh Cincinnati chat with Peter Van Valkenburgh, Director of Research at Coin Center. Coin Center is a non-profit research and advocacy group focused on the public policy issues facing cryptocurrency and decentralized computing technologies. In this conversation, they cover the various branches in the US system, how these interact with the crypto/blockchain community, what the process is for making regulation and how coincenter gets involved. Here are a few of the groups that they mention: FinCen: Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. SEC: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission CFTC: Commodities futures trading commission Here are some handy links: Tangents from Coin Center: Rohan Grey https://www.coincenter.org Coincenter Blog: Coin Center files second comment in FinCEN rulemaking challenging its authority to make the surveillance rule Coincenter Blog: Join us in responding to an unfair and discriminatory midnight rulemaking Stablecoin Tethering and Bank Licensing Enforcement (STABLE) Act Interpretive Letter #1172 OCC Chief Counsel's Interpretation on National Bank and Federal Savings Association Authority to H Thanks for this week’s sponsor Interchain Foundation or ICF ICF is focused on the research, development, and promotion of open, decentralized, network technologies like Cosmos One of the most recent developments in the Cosmos ecosystem is the Stargate upgrade. Stargate is the largest Cosmos upgrade yet, enabling blockchains to connect with each other using the first standardized protocol for inter-blockchain communication (IBC). Here is our episode with Chris Goes about IBC. If you want to apply to the Interchain Foundation Grants program, here is the link: apply.interchain.io Deadline for this round is February 14th. Thanks again ICF! *If you like what we do: * Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Catch us on Youtube Read up on the r/ZKPodcast subreddit Give us feedback! -https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKPatreon -https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge *Or directly here: * ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz ZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

This week, Anna and Tarun chat with Stani Kulechov, co-founder of Aave, about the origin and evolution of the project, the changing DeFi landscape, collateralized debt in crypto, Flash Loans, Flash Minting, Credit Delegation and the future of DeFi. Quick recap: A Flashloan is an uncollatoralised loan which must be issued and repaid in the same transaction before the blockchain updates the user’s account balances. If it isn’t repaid in this time, the transaction will fail. We have discussed Flashloans on the show before see this previous episode: https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/118 Thank you to this week’s sponsor Hermez Protocol! Hermez is a Layer 2 solution that scales token transfers on top of Ethereum and which can handle up to 2000 transactions per second. Designed for high-frequency tokens, Hermez is a zk rollup which leverages zk-SNARKs for validity proofs and with on-chain data availability. Hermez's zero-knowledge circuits are developed using iden3’s circuit compiler language, Circom. They also introduce a novel consensus algorithm, Proof-of-Donation, that gives 40% of each transaction fee back to Ethereum community projects as a donation, thereby supporting Ethereum development. After passing two security audits, Hermez is running a bug bounty program, offering up to 100 ETH to whoever discovers any critical vulnerabilities. We recently had Jordi Baylina, Technical Lead at Hermez, on the show for an interview - you can find that episode here. Learn more about the project and bug bounty at https://hermez.io/ If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm -https://twitter.com/zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram -https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjA Catch us on Youtube -https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYWsYz5cKw4wZ9Mpe4kuM_g Read up on the r/ZKPodcast subreddit -https://www.reddit.com/r/zkpodcast Give us feedback! -https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A Support our Gitcoin Grant -https://gitcoin.co/grants/329/zero-knowledge-podcast-2 Support us on the ZKPatreon -https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz ZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

This week, Anna and guest co-host James Prestwich chat with David Vorick from Skynet Labs about the scope and goals of the Skynet project. They discuss the journey from earlier work on Sia & distributed data to Skynet, SkyDB, and their idea for Recursive Content Monetization - a new model to pay online creators and content owners. They also chat about the SkyFeed project - a decentralised Twitter like project. In this part of the conversation, they explore how the decentralised community could potentially remove the harm done by the social chat algorithms, but also the potential impact - and danger - that fully decentralised systems can have. Here are some helpful links: https://siasky.net/ https://sia.tech/ https://support.siasky.net/article/nz6p6876e3-skynet-resources https://blog.sia.tech/skydb-a-mutable-database-for-the-decentralized-web-7170beeaa985 https://blog.sia.tech/skynet-the-future-of-nebulous-c9922eb53456 https://joinmastodon.org/ Thanks to this week’s sponsor Aave.  Aave Protocol is an open source and non-custodial protocol where users can earn interest on deposits and borrow assets  Aave Protocol also features access to innovative DeFi building blocks like Flash Loans. They are now introducing a new feature is Credit Delegation, where users can delegate their credit to another person who can borrow against it  For anyone thinking of contributing to the ecosystem, check out the Grants Program - here is the link: https://docs.aave.com/portal/   Also vIsit aave.com or join the Aave Discord #developers channel https://aave.com/discord to find out more! If you like what we do:  Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm -https://twitter.com/zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram -https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjA Catch us on Youtube -https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYWsYz5cKw4wZ9Mpe4kuM_g Read up on the r/ZKPodcast subreddit -https://www.reddit.com/r/zkpodcast  Give us feedback! -https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A  Support our Gitcoin Grant -https://gitcoin.co/grants/329/zero-knowledge-podcast-2 Support us on the ZKPatreon -https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here:  ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz ZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

This week, Anna chats with guests Tarun Chitra (Gauntlet & Robot Ventures), James Prestwich (cLabs) and Josh Cincinnati (previously Zcash Foundation). Throughout this conversation, they touch on topics like the state of zero knowledge applications, blockchain technology, privacy and DeFi. They also explore what we can expect in the near future. Here are a few of the papers and links we mention in the show: Mina’s Testworld Barry’s Post Why you can’t build a private uniswap with ZKPs Flash Boys 2.0: Frontrunning, Transaction Reordering, and Consensus Instability in Decentralized Exchanges Flashbots Project If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Catch us on Youtube Read up on the r/ZKPodcast subreddit Give us feedback! Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKPatreon

This week, Anna and Fredrik do a look back at 2020 and chat about some of their favourite ZKPodcast episodes and themes from this past year. This is also a notable episode, as it will be Fredrik's last as a regular co-host. And so they also take this time to reminisce and look back over 3 years of the Zero Knowledge Podcast and share some thoughts on how the space has developed. Some of the 2020 episodes discussed: ZK & Games: Dark Forest with Brian Gu Isogenies with Luca De Feo ZKPs in Ethereum with Vitalik Buterin & Justin Drake Consensus Algorithms & HotStuff with Ittai Abraham Proof of Necessary Work with Akis Kattis (NYU) Trusted Setup Ceremonies Explored A Tale of Sushi(Swap) with Tarun, Hasu and Anna - Part1 Josh Cincinnati on Zcash, governance and leaving the Zcash Foundation Some of the projects that had previously been on the zkPodcast that launched or were announced this year: Zk-projects: Hermez Network Aleo MACI DeversiFi Loopring L1s: Polkadot Near Filecoin Nucypher Thanks to our sponsor Least Authority. Least Authority is a security consulting company known for their dedication to pushing the limits on how to build privacy-respecting solutions. They are a team of security researchers, open source developers, privacy advocates, cryptographers who specialize in security audits, design specification reviews, and security-by-design. Given that privacy is at the core of their work and mission, least authority recognizes the importance of privacy in DeFi and other decentralizing technologies and the role it plays in preserving balance of power. Join their mailing list to connect and stay informed on the latest in Least Authority security audit reports, upcoming events, open source contributions and product development initiatives. Subscribe at leastauthority.com/newsletter If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram Catch us on Youtube -https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYWsYz5cKw4wZ9Mpe4kuM_g Read up on the r/ZKPodcast subreddit Give us feedback! -https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKPatreon Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz ZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

This week, Anna chats with Matthew Finestone and Brecht Devos from Loopring about their zkrollup protocol, DEX and wallet. We explored the evolution of Loopring, how their zkrollup works, how they are bringing AMMs to L2 and what’s next for the project. We mention Brecht’s previous episode as well the talk by Barry Whitehat at Devcon4 Thanks to this week’s sponsor Parity Technologies Parity is a company building the core infrastructure to power Web 3.0. They strive to write the fastest, lightest, and safest core technology in blockchain and write lots of open-source code. Parity is currently looking to fill a number of job positions • Berlin office: experienced, creative and enthusiastic Content Marketing Manager. • Remote: CI/CD Engineer to help automate an ever-growing set of open source repos in GitHub. Interested or know someone? More details at parity.io/jobs If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm -https://twitter.com/zeroknowledgefm Join us on Telegram -https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjA Catch us on Youtube -https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYWsYz5cKw4wZ9Mpe4kuM_g Read up on the r/ZKPodcast subreddit -https://www.reddit.com/r/zkpodcast Give us feedback! -https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A Support our Gitcoin Grant -https://gitcoin.co/grants/329/zero-knowledge-podcast-2 Support us on the ZKPatreon -https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge

This week, Anna chats with Eduardo Antuñia Díez - co-founder / project lead of DAppNode - about the importance of running your own node, the roll out of ETH2 and the role DAppNode aims to play in the future. Here are some useful links: STABLE Act Jordi episode DAppNode Discord DAppNode Gaurdians of Ethereum DAO proposal Zero Knowledge Gitcoin grant is eligible for Gitcoin's CLR matching - on now! Last chance to donate before the new year. Thanks to this week’s sponsor O(1) Labs, the team incubating [Mina](minaprotocol.com) protocol. Mina is the world’s lightest blockchain, powered by participants. And over the past 18 months, the community - alongside the core team at O(1) Labs - have been working on a rigorous testnet. And now they’re close to finding a mainnet candidate. Signup for this adversarial testnet, Testworld. Signups open today, but is limited to the first 1000 participants. Go to minaprotocol.com/adversarial to secure your spot. Also be sure to join their active technical community discord at bit.ly/minadiscord If you like what we do: Follow us on [Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm]( -https://twitter.com/zeroknowledgefm) Join us on Telegram Catch us on Youtube Read up on the r/ZKPodcast subreddit Give us feedback! https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A Support our Gitcoin Grant Support us on the ZKPatreon