Zero Knowledge

In this week’s episode, we chat with Ben Fisch, Stanford PhD student working in Dan Boneh's applied cryptography group. In our conversation, we dig into accumulators, Merkle trees & vector commitments. We also learn a bit about the RSA Accumulator Paper - entitled Batching Techniques for Accumulators with Applications to IOPs and Stateless Blockchains - that he co-authored with Benedikt Bünz and touch on some of the ways these RSA accumulators could potentially be used in a blockchain context. Here are a few previous episodes that might help you prep for this interview: Merkle Trees https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/57MPCs https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/60Here are a few concepts and links we mention: Batching Techniques for Accumulators with Applications to IOPs and Stateless Blockchainshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_(cryptosystem)https://github.com/cambrian/accumulatorhttps://medium.com/@chia.net/chia-vdf-competition-guide-5382e1f4bd39Thank you to our sponsor this week StarkWare StarkWare will be presenting the StarkWare Sessions - on Sept 16th in Tel Aviv. The event will bring together some of the brightest minds in zero knowledge research from both the academic and application spheres. Topics that will be discussed are self-custodial trading, STARKs for Layer 1, STARK-friendly hash functions and other cool things you can do with STARK proofs.Use the code Zkpodcast for 20% off the tickets - > https://starkware.co/starkware-sessions/If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramSupport our Gitcoin GrantSupport us on the ZKPatreonOr directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

This week, we chat with Will Harborne, co-founder of Ethfinex and previously at Bitfinex, about the path from traditional exchanges, to centralised crypto exchanges and more recently DEXs. We explore what the role of the DEXs really is and what we could imagine seeing in the future of the space. Some links and articles mentioned: EthfinexPhil Daian's Flash Boys 2.0: Frontrunning, Transaction Reordering, and Consensus Instability in Decentralized ExchangesIf you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramSupport our Gitcoin GrantSupport us on the ZKPatreonOr directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this week’s episode, we welcome Ariel Gabizon, previously a Electric Coin Company (Zcash) engineer and now a cryptographer working on zero knowledge constructions for Filecoin. Ariel has worked closely with some of the most exciting projects and researchers pushing the boundaries on zero knowledge research. He is also the person who discovered the Zcash bug (along with Sean Bowe and Zooko). In this episode, we explore his journey into the space, what inspires him, and what exciting new paradigms he is exploring today! Here are some of the articles and topics he mentions: Algebraic Methods for Interactive Proof SystemsECC (Zcash) Vulnerability Blog post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Riemannhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_zeta_functionhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_function_fieldhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Hassehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasse_principlehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/André_WeilThank you to our sponsor this week StarkWare StarkWare will be presenting the StarkWare Sessions - on Sept 16th in Tel Aviv. The event will bring together some of the brightest minds in zero knowledge research from both the academic and application spheres. Topics that will be discussed are self-custodial trading, STARKs for Layer 1, STARK-friendly hash functions and other cool things you can do with STARK proofs.Use the code Zkpodcast for 20% off the tickets - > https://starkware.co/starkware-sessions/If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on Telegram - https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjASupport our Gitcoin Grant - https://gitcoin.co/grants/38/zero-knowledge-podcastSupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this episode, we sit down with Pratyush Mishra, CS PhD Student at UC Berkeley and one of the co-authors on the Zexe project, to discuss the Zexe protocol. We cover how this paper came to be, what it aims to solve, how it works, and how it could be used. Recorded at ZCon1 in SplitFor more on the protocol, check out: Zexe: Enabling Decentralized Private Computation Paper https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/962.pdfZexe Library - https://github.com/scipr-lab/zexeThis talk by Pratyush at SBC '19: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr4Es9s1IogOur ZK Study Club session on Zexe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RItcNRChrzI&t=4sThank you to our sponsor this week Aragon One.If you love working with talented designers building smart user interfaces, or if you are simply excited about working on making DAOs easy and accessible to create & manage, then you should check out Aragon One’s available jobs. For more about the Frontend Engineer role, or available jobs in general, check out aragon.one/jobs. If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on Telegram - https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjASupport our Gitcoin Grant - https://gitcoin.co/grants/38/zero-knowledge-podcastSupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this episode, we sit down at the Zcon1 Conference in Croatia with Amber Baldet, CEO and co-founder of Clovyr, former JPMorgan Blockchain Program Lead, and board member of the Zcash Foundation. We chat about about her road to the blockchain space, the problems she aims to solve with her work on Clovyr, some updates about the Zcash community & foundation, the state of zero knowledge research and the potential and challenges around the implementation of zero knowledge systems in the real world. Thanks again to this week's sponsor Neufund. If you’re interested in how Neufund's open-source technical environment is enabling tokenization of real-world assets or the QA position, check their GitHub profile at github.com/neufund or the Neufund job offers at neufund.org/careersIf you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on Telegram - https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjASupport our Gitcoin Grant - https://gitcoin.co/grants/38/zero-knowledge-podcastSupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this episode, Anna chats with Robert Habermeier, one of the co-founders of Polkadot and an engineer at Parity Technology, about his early experience with Rust and cryptography, as well as the work he did at Parity on Warp Sync and Lightclients. We then discuss how this helped inspire some of the concepts and design of the Polkadot protocol. We also chat about some of the exciting concepts that he is discovering along the way - such as new architectures to promote interchain security, Trust Wormholes and more! For more about what we discussed, check out these links: Polkadot: https://polkadot.network/about/Warp sync: https://wiki.parity.io/Warp-SyncLightclient https://www.parity.io/what-is-a-light-client/Special thanks to this week's sponsor: Trail of Bits Trail of Bits is offering a service for young technology companies who could use expert security support, but aren't quite at a stage to hire their own team. The service includes staffing a #security channel to answer questions, review high risk PRs, and integrate the latest in continuous testing into your build pipeline. Visit https://crytic.io/ or www.trailofbits.com for help securing your product.If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on Telegram - https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjASupport our Gitcoin Grant - https://gitcoin.co/grants/38/zero-knowledge-podcastSupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this week's episode we chat with two of the people behind the Graphene project, Chia-Che Tsai of Texas A&M University and Golem developer Lukasz Glen, about TEEs, Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX), and the way the Graphene project aims to make it easier for devs to interact with these hardware enclaves.Graphene started as a research project at Stony Brook University, led by Chia-Che Tsai and Don Porter, about emerging hardware platforms. In 2015, Intel Labs recognized the potential for Graphene to be an open-source compatibility layer for Intel® SGX, and has contributed to Graphene development since. With Golem and Invisible Things Lab (ITL), the Graphene project has also been now used within a decentralised blockchain context. The security around TEEs is a hotly debated topic (at least in our community) and we delve into the questions around these with our guests. That said, we do see this as the first of a series of episodes where we explore the challenges and advantages of using TEEs. https://grapheneproject.io/Thank you to this week's sponsor Apograf! Apograf has built an extensive collection of open access research papers on cryptography, distributed computer systems and blockchainIf you are interested in finding out more, check out welcome.apograf.io or this link to a curated list of cryptocurrency course materials: https://apograf.io/c/cryptocurrency_classIf you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on Telegram - https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjASupport our Gitcoin Grant - https://gitcoin.co/grants/38/zero-knowledge-podcastSupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this week’s episode, we meet with Dominic Tarr, a protocol designer and security auditor at Least Authority who works on Scuttlebutt - a decentralized secure gossip platform. We discuss P2P messaging and the challenges of sending messages within a p2p network in a truly decentralised manner.Here are some links we mention: https://github.com/ssbc/ssb-serverhttps://www.allthingsdistributed.com/files/amazon-dynamo-sosp2007.pdfFor more on Scuttlebutt, please have a look at these resources. https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/For more on Dominic, check out this article in the Atlantic - https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/meet-the-counterantidisintermediationists/527553/If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on Telegram - https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjASupport our Gitcoin Grant - https://gitcoin.co/grants/38/zero-knowledge-podcastSupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this week's episode, Anna sits down with Joe Lallouz and Aaron Henshaw from Bison Trails - a validator infrastructure company based in NYC. Recorded during the NYC blockchain week, we chatted about the latest PoS systems to launch, what it means to be a validator, how the incentive structures can impact the ecosystem development and potential futures for this uncharted validator landscape. Thank you to this week's sponsor - Event HorizonEvent Horizon is a Energy Blockchain event happening in Berlin on June 19-20 . The event is packed with everything you need to learn about how Blockchain tech can impact the Energy sector, it features the people making this happen, both from the engineers building the Ethereum based Energy Web Chain and the energy sector innovators looking to bring this tech into their industry. If you are interested in finding out more, you can use our special ZeroKnowledge discount at www.eventhorizonsummit.com/ZeroKnowledge. We are also giving away two free tickets - just ping us on twitter or in our telegram channel with the hashtag #EventHorizon #EH19 for your chance to win these! If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on Telegram - https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjASupport our Gitcoin Grant - https://gitcoin.co/grants/38/zero-knowledge-podcastSupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this week's episode, we sit down with Liz Steininger and Chris Wood from Least Authority to discuss the state of privacy today, the case for private crypto subscription payments and their P4 proposal. The Private Periodic Payment Protocol, P4, uses the shielded account feature of Zcash to provide a fully decentralised method for recurring end-to-end private cryptocurrency payments.Links mentioned:Article about Tim Berners Lee wanting a decentralized webThe P4 PaperIf you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on Telegram - https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjASupport our Gitcoin Grant - https://gitcoin.co/grants/38/zero-knowledge-podcastSupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ