Zero Knowledge

In this special podcast crossover episode, Tarun, Hasu and Anna cover the emergence of governance tokens in the DeFi space and then dive deep into the Sushiswap story - what protocols came before and how it performed a vampire attack on (what was at the time) a tokenless Uniswap. This story acts as a fascinating case study as well as a cautionary tale for moat-less protocols.This episode is the 1st of 2 parts, with the 2nd part airing on Hasu's Uncommon Core podcast. In this part, we cover the definition of governance tokens and the first half of the sushi swap story. Tarun also mentions "impermanent loss" in this episode. However this term has been called to "divergence loss" and you can read more about what it is here. A quick caveat: We recorded this episode just hours before the Uniswap token launch, and so we decided to produce an amendment section to tackle the aftermath of the launch and wrap up the story. You can find this here: Sushiswap Bonus ChatThanks 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. Known for their security reviews, including work with zero knowledge proofs as well as having implemented zero-knowledge access passes with the distributed storage system, Tahoe-LAFS. It seems fitting then that they are now working on a step by step guide to building zk-SNARKS called The MoonMath Manual which you can find and donate to on GitcoinAs an aside, the Zero Knowledge podcast also has a grant there, so you might consider donating to both! If you are interested in working with Least Authority on anything zero-knowledge related, reach out to them - whether you want an audit of your project, want to collaborate on security research or even just want to learn more about zk proofs, they would like to hear from you. I’ve added the email in the shownotes, contactus@leastauthority.com or visit them at LeastAuthority.comIf you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramCatch us on YoutubeRead up on the r/ZKPodcast subredditGive us feedback! https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A Support our Gitcoin GrantSupport us on the ZKPatreonOr directly here: ETH: 0x4BF66E52f3009Cd138e48f142D47661037160001BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t-add: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQz-add: zs1f8jjtkuqwvxy9h4q7grl6287hmpzyt4s55d392djx43wxxudwv20x7qgs74kp2h6e9k95lswst8 Read transcript

In this episode, we catch up with Vishwanath Raman, Privacy Architect at Oasis Labs where he works on privacy and confidentiality technologies for Direct to Consumer and Business to Business use cases. His interest and experience span formal methods, applied machine learning, security, and privacy. Vishwa got his PhD in Computer Science at UC Santa Cruz followed by postdoctoral work at Carnegie Mellon. The Oasis Network is a privacy-enabled blockchain platform for responsible data use. Using a combination of secure computing and privacy technologies, the Oasis Network enables data owners to take control of their data and treat their data as a digital asset via data tokenization. They provide privacy as a service and use secure enclaves and differential privacy in order build a platform for a responsible data economy.We dive into the way the Oasis system is architected for privacy, who the ideal customers are and what the use cases for this protocol is. We also chatted about some of the tradeoffs in using SGX as well as the recent Binance-led CryptoSafe Alliance announcement where Oasis is the primary infrastructure builder. Here are some of the papers and links that we discuss: Oasis Labs at zkSummit ZK0x02 Chorus: Differential Privacy via Query Rewriting Towards Practical Differential Privacy for SQL Queries Problems with machine learning and privacy (one of many)Towards Practical Differentially Private Convex OptimizationOne small correction: Vishwa mentions the number of Validators on Oasis as numbering in the hundreds, but upon checking, we were informed that the number of validators that will participate in the consensus committee at mainnet launch is 70-100. More details in the following blog post: https://docs.oasis.dev/oasis-network-primer/token-metrics-and-distributionThank you to this week’s sponsor Trail of Bits. Trail of Bits has recently published a new guide for building secure contracts with their Crytic offering. Crytic is a SaaS-based GitHub application created by Trail of Bits that continuously assures your Ethereum smart contracts are safe and functional. It reports build status on every commit and runs a suite of security analyses so you get immediate security feedback. Check out this guide for tips on how to build security into your dapps from the start and how to use the Trail of Bits suite of tools for automated vulnerability detection. Thank you once again Trail of BitsJoin their Slack channel (#crytic) for support, and follow Crytic on Twitter @CryticCIIf you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramCatch us on YoutubeRead up on the r/ZKPodcast subredditGive us feedback! https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A Support our Gitcoin GrantSupport us on the ZKPatreonOr directly here: ETH: 0x4BF66E52f3009Cd138e48f142D47661037160001BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t-add: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQz-add: zs1f8jjtkuqwvxy9h4q7grl6287hmpzyt4s55d392djx43wxxudwv20x7qgs74kp2h6e9k95lswst8 Read transcript

In this week’s special episode, we flip the script and invite our friend Alexandra Heller to ask ZKPodcast co-hosts Anna & Fredrik some questions from the audience.. It’s a bit of a different format, so hope you will enjoy! Here are a few of the episodes we mention: -Chatting about consensus algorithms with Robert Habermeier-Zooko talks Zcash on our 50th episode -Sean Bowe on SNARKs, Trusted Setups & Elliptic Curve Cryptography-A fireside chat with a couple Parity peeps-Isogenies with Luca De Feo-Statistical modeling of PoS systems with Tarun Chitra-Introduction to ZKPsAnd other podcasts we mention: -Bikeshed: https://www.bikeshed.fm -Distributed: https://distributed.blog/podcast/ -Extremities: https://anchor.fm/extremities -Accidental Tech: https://atp.fm -History of Rome: https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/-Hardcore History: https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/-Epicenter: https://epicenter.tv/-Uncommon Core: https://uncommoncore.co/Thanks to this week’s sponsor AleoAleo is the first platform for fully private applications. It uses blockchain and zero-knowledge cryptography to deliver a web experience that is both personal and private. With Aleo, developers can write private applications, without a background in blockchains or expertise in cryptography.Aleo has released Developer Preview I, an early peek at what the future of the web will look like. The release introduces a new programming language called Leo, a new community-driven package manager for Leo, and a new development environment or IDE called Aleo Studio.We recently had Howard Wu, a co-founder of Aleo, on the show for an interview - you can find that episode here. Learn more about Aleo at https://aleo.org/ Thanks again Aleo! If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramCatch us on YoutubeRead up on the r/ZKPodcast subredditGive us feedback! https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A Support our Gitcoin GrantSupport us on the ZKPatreonOr directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t-add: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQz-add: zs1f8jjtkuqwvxy9h4q7grl6287hmpzyt4s55d392djx43wxxudwv20x7qgs74kp2h6e9k95lswst8 Read transcript

Jordi Baylina, Co-founder of Iden3, talks about building zk circuits and the recently announced Hermez, a new zkrollup with a proof-of-donation mechanism. They discuss the role of Circum as a circuit compiler and its connection to ZK Snarks. They also explore the innovative features of Hermes, including proof of donation and decentralized selection process for the roll-up coordinator.

Howard Wu, Founder of Aleo, discusses Aleo - a privacy-focused blockchain enabling fully private applications. Topics include programming languages for SNARKs, switching from VC/Academia to founding, missing features in web services, high programmability, functional privacy, ZEXE protocol, and Proof-of-Succinct-Work.

In this episode we chat with Josh Cincinnati, the former executive director of Zcash Foundation. We cover Josh's career before Zcash, his work at the foundation, the important role privacy plays in crypto and the challenges of decentralised governance. We also discuss his decision to leave the foundation, Zcash Foundation's philosophy of transparency, his hopes for the future of the Zcash community, his next steps and why he thinks people in crypto may wanna take themselves a bit less serious and remember to have some fun! Here are some additional links: Zcash FoundationJosh’s parting letterPrevious episodes on Zcash with Zooko, Sean Bowe, Sean and Daira and Henry de ValenceCatch this cross-over appearance with Anna on Josh's Twodcast. His show is released once per ... whenever Josh feels like As mentioned in the intro, the ZkValidator.com is now live on 3 networks: Cosmos, Kusama and, as of this month, Polkadot. For the origin story of the ZKValidator, check out this zkpodcast episode with the guys from Bison TrailsIf you are a token holder on Cosmos, Kusama and/or Polkadot and you think privacy matters, want to see more zkps integrated throughout these networks and generally wanna support this initiative, head to our website: ZkValidator.com. There you can find instructions on how to stake your tokens to our validator. For Cosmos visit - https://zkvalidator.com/cosmos/For Kusama visit - https://zkvalidator.com/kusama/For Polkadot visit - https://zkvalidator.com/polkadot/If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramCatch us on YoutubeRead up on the r/ZKPodcast subredditGive us feedback! https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A Support our Gitcoin GrantSupport us on the ZKPatreonOr directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: T-add: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQZ-add: zs1f8jjtkuqwvxy9h4q7grl6287hmpzyt4s55d392djx43wxxudwv20x7qgs74kp2h6e9k95lswst8 (Just added!!) Read transcript

In this episode, Anna and guest host Georgios chat with Hasu, an independent crypto researcher focused on economics and security, about elastic block size proposals in both Bitcoin and Ethereum.They cover how Hasu found his way into research as well as the history of the block size BIPs that shaped the ecosystem as well as Ethereum’s EIP 1559Here are some additional links: Research paper: A model for Bitcoin’s security and the declining block subsidyAnalysis of EIP-2593 (Escalator)Analysis of EIP-1559Thank you to this week’s sponsor Trail of Bits.Trail of Bits found a bug in yVault that would have allowed an attacker to drain most (if not all) of the pool's assets. They quickly reported the bug to the yVault team and were able to secure the roughly $400K USD held in the system. This bug, which was thankfully caught, highlights the risk stemming from increased complexity caused by composition in the DeFi space. ‘Generally - DeFi composability is hard. For example, If you integrate multiple tokens, any one token could compromise the security of your entire platform. On the other hand, if you integrate multiple platforms, your protocol could suffer from complex interactions.If this is a relevant topic for you or the project you work on, reach out to Trail of Bits to arrange a security assessment, or sign up for their Ethereum security office hours.Here is a link to their blog post “Accidentally stepping on a DeFi lego” https://blog.trailofbits.com/2020/08/05/accidentally-stepping-on-a-defi-lego Contact them here: https://www.trailofbits.com/contact/If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramCatch us on YoutubeRead up on the r/ZKPodcast subredditGive us feedback! https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A Support our Gitcoin GrantSupport us on the ZKPatreonOr directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ Read transcript

In this week's episode, we chat with Brian Gu, a student at MIT and creator of the Dark Forest game. We chat about education, blockchain based games and what inspired his work on the Dark Forest game. We then dig into how this game creates an incomplete information game space by using zkSNARKs to create a “cryptographic fog of war” and more! As described on their blog, Dark Forest is an MMO space-conquest game where players discover and conquer planets in an infinite, procedurally-generated, cryptographically-specified universe. Find out more about the game here: https://zkga.me/Least Authority is a team of security researchers, open source developers, privacy advocates, and cryptographers focused is on securing distributed systems: blockchain, peer-to-peer and other approaches to systems built with the principle of least authority. They are known for security audits and reviews like the Eth 2.0 Specification, Protocol Lab's Gossipsub Protocol, Zcash Sapling upgrade, & Tezos Foundation's TzBTC, as well as their work with zero knowledge proofs integrated into the Tahoe-LAFS (secure distributed file store) with "ZKAPs: zero knowledge access passes". They are currently looking for a technical writer to help the Least Authority team write security research and audit reports, open source technical documentation and privacy analysis statements on technical approaches. Find out more here: leastauthority.com/zkpodcastIf you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramCatch us on YoutubeGive us feedback! https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A Support our Gitcoin GrantSupport us on the ZKPatreonOr directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ Read transcript

** Be sure to visit our ZKPodcast subreddit and leave us some questions for the upcoming AMA!** In this week’s episode, Anna and guest-host / frequent guest Tarun Chitra catch up with Alex Evans, researcher at Placeholder Capital. They dive into the latest in DeFi, a topic that we don't cover too often, but has become hard to ignore. Specifically they discuss the emergence of liquidity farming, the difference between the zkresearch space and the DeFi space, some emerging concepts like AMM and Staking derivatives, and cover a recent report Tarun and Alex published together on the impact of staking derivatives on the security of PoS systems. Here are a few of the articles and links mentioned in the episode: What PoS and DeFi can learn from mortgage-backed securities by Tarun and AlexLiquidity Provider Returns in Geometric Mean Markets by Alex EvansBuilding Liquidity into Token DistributionBlack–Scholes modelThank you to this week's sponsor Trail of Bits. Upgradeable contracts are not as safe as you think. Architectures for upgradeability can be flawed, locking contracts, losing data, or sabotaging your ability to recover from an incident. Every contract upgrade must be carefully reviewed to avoid catastrophic mistakes. The GitHub App Crytic now includes a comprehensive suite of 17 upgradeability checks to help you avoid these pitfalls. This tool allows devs to stress test their upgradeable contracts as they go, saving time and potentially catastrophic headaches down the line. For more check out their blog post where they describe how to use this tool - https://blog.trailofbits.com/2020/06/12/upgradeable-contracts-made-safer-with-crytic/So thanks again Trail of BitsIf you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramCatch us on YoutubeGive us feedback! https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A Support our Gitcoin GrantSupport us on the ZKPatreonOr directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ Read transcript

** Check out the ZKPodcast subreddit and share some comments/questions for our upcoming AMA **This week, we catch up with Benedikt Bunz and Ben Fisch, PhD students at Stanford, once again. In this episode, we dive deeper into Findora, a project that was co-founded by Ben (who is also the CTO) and where Benedikt works as the Head of Research. We look at what the Findora project is, discuss the "selective disclosure" concept at the heart of their constructions, explore the balance between transparency and privacy and describe what problems Findora aims to solve. For some background on our guests, check out these previous episode with Benedikt Bunz on Bulletproofs and Ben Fisch on AccumulatorsHere are some additional relevant links: Findora's siteAlan Szepieniec on Supersonics - 11:33Ben Fisch on Supersonics at the SF zkSummit in Oct 2019If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramCatch us on YoutubeGive us feedback! https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A Support our Gitcoin GrantSupport us on the ZKPatreonOr directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ