Zero Knowledge

In this week, we sit down with Kevin Owocki, co-founder of gitcoin, to have a look at how open source blockchain development is funded. We cover the different methods for funding open source work, what has worked in the past, what hasn’t, how funding blockchain projects can be quite different and what people are experimenting with today. We discuss: EIP1337 Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital InfrastructureA handy guide to financial support for open sourceFunding through foundationsGrants programsCrowdfundingToken paymentsFounder rewards/block rewardsThank 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 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

Sean Bowe, engineer at the Electric Coin Company, talks about SNARKs, trusted setups, and elliptic curve cryptography. They discuss the story of Zcash, Powers of Tau trusted set up, SONICs, ZEXE, and the BLS12-381 Elliptic Curve Construction. They also mention the bug in the Zcash proving system and the design and implementation of the BLS 1231 elliptic curve.

Zac Williamson, co-founder of the Aztec Protocol and expert in zero knowledge tools and range proofs, discusses the motivation behind Aztec, the efficiency and size of proofs in the Aztec system, challenges of implementing zero knowledge proofs on Ethereum, the lack of consensus on zero knowledge standards, EOC 1723 as a solution to designing a cryptography engine, and the use of curves in zero knowledge treatments.

In this week's episode, we sit down with Justin Drake, researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, to discuss randomness in blockchain, how it can be created and what adversarial models exist. We also discuss the random beacon and how that concept has evolved in the development of ETH2.0Our initial definition of randomness in cryptography comes largely from this article by cloudflare: https://blog.cloudflare.com/randomness-101-lavarand-in-production/Check out Justin Drake's DevCon 4 talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqL_cMlPjOI with the slides https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VKBMcEMaY6PQjDJK4yAFtxn0vD41eYXW05YA3vdTBsI/edit.Explore vdfresearch.org for more on the topic of VDFIf 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 invite J. Ayo Akinyele to the podcast. Ayo is a co-Founder of Bolt Labs which will be focused on developing the Bolt Protocol, a privacy preserving layer 2 approach for anonymous micropayments, which is similar to Lightning Network. Bolt, which stands for Blind, Offchain, Lightweight, Transactions, could be used for both scaling zcash or providing a scalable privacy solution for other chains.Here are some additional resources: Original Bolt Paper by Matthew Green and Ian Meiers: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/701.pdf Bolt description the Electric Coin Company's blog: https://z.cash/blog/bolt-private-payment-channels/Ayo was on the podcast before in our Zcon0 episode: https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/32 (he features around the 17 minute mark) Here is some additional information about the Lightning Network and the projects Casa Nodes and Bitrefill which are mentioned in the episode. 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 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

Guests: Alex Vlasov & Alex Gluchowski, developers at Matter Labs using zkSNARKs to scale Ethereum transactions. They discuss the Roll-up project, Matter Labs implementation, Franklin network, off-chain execution, history and state storage models in Ethereum, off-chain computation, zkSNARKs for video compression, sharding, trusted setup for zkSNARKs, and progress in snark circuit implementation.

In this week's episode, we speak with Julian Arni about Radicle, a decentralized alternative to Github built on IPFS. Radicle is both a programming language and a set of tools to enable decentralised open source software development. We go deep into this project, it's hope to impact open source development and also touch on the societal questions that inspired it. Here is a short tweet that summarizes it well. The project can be found on twitter and website 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: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz

In this interview, we chat with Rune Christensen from MakerDAO about stablecoins, MakerDAO’s take on this concept, the peg and how this is maintained, security, oracles and more. Here are a few of the terms that we discuss in the episode: DAI: a crypto asset-backed token pegged to the USD  — it is designed to maintain a stable value.MKR: Valuebearing, tradeable token. As a governance token, MKR holders have the responsibility of making risk based decisions that will influence the future health of the system.CDP: The MakerDAO Collateralized Debt Position (CDP) is a smart contract which runs on the Ethereum blockchain. It is a core component of the Dai Stablecoin System whose purpose is to create Dai in exchange for collateral which it then holds in escrow until the borrowed Dai is returned.The best resource we found to explain the CDP is here: https://medium.com/cryptolinks/maker-for-dummies-a-plain-english-explanation-of-the-dai-stablecoin-e4481d79b90Thanks 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 VP of Engineering position, check their GitHub profile at github.com/neufund or the Neufund job offer 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: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz

In this week's episode, we sit down with Sam Williams of Arweave to chat about their novel approach to decentralised storage. We discuss incentivising data storage, the concept of the permaweb, and how to properly decentralise the internet archives. 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: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz

In this week's special episode, Anna pops over to EthCC - the Ethereum Community Conference - to find out what's on people's minds. Speaking with Boris Mann, Maria Paula Fernandez, Hudson Jameson, Sunny Aggarwal, Yalda Mousavinia, and Peter Mauric, these conversations centre around decision making in the decentralised space, the role of transparency, the different organisations and groups that have formed in Ethereum to help make decisions, how compensation can play a role, the code of conduct, the importance of signaling and much more. Here are some of the groups or initiatives or talks mentioned in the podcast:Fellowship of the Ethereum MagiciansEthereum Cat HerdersRick Dudley's talk at EthCCTennagraph Signaling SiteEthereum Community’s Code of ConductCosmos Protocol blogAutarkAragonDecredIf you are looking for some further context for this episode, you may want to check out some previous episodes about governance related topics: Hudson Jameson talks EIPs and Ethereum core decision-makingVlad and Gav go head-to-head on blockchain governancePath to an ERC StandardSpecial thanks to this week's sponsor: Trail of Bits Trail of Bits is looking for companies writing Ethereum smart contracts that could use their security help! If you would like to test out their continuous assurance system, fill out the signup form on crytic.ioIf 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: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz