Zero Knowledge

In this week’s episode, host Anna Rose and Kobi Gurkan check in on the state of ZK today. They discuss recent ZK applications and tooling as well as developments from the last 6 months. They review new use cases such as ZK for off-chain computations and dive into research breakthroughs, trends, security and much more. Finally, they introduce the concept of zkpod.ai which will be covered fully in next week's episode.Additional links mentioned in this episode:Renegade.fi Experimenting with Collaborative zk-SNARKs: Zero-Knowledge Proofs for Distributed SecretsEpisode 256: New ZK Use Cases with Dan Boneh Episode 246: Adversarial Machine Learning Research with Florian Tramèr Episode 276: Expanding Computation on Ethereum with AxiomEpisode 277: Nova and Beyond with Srinath SettyProtoStar: Generic Efficient Accumulation/Folding for Special Sound Protocols by Bünz and Chen ezkl GitHub Yohei Nakajima TwitterLangChain Website Anna Rose’s zkpod.ai Blog Post zkpod.ai Twitter zkpod.ai Website One Server for the Price of Two: Simple and Fast Single-Server Private Information Retrieval by Henzinger, Hong, Corrigan-Gibbs, Meiklejohn, VaikuntanathanPiano: Extremely Simple, Single-Server PIR with Sublinear Server Computation by Zhou, Park, Shi, ZhengBlyss Website Janmajayamall’s GitHubCheck out the ZK Jobs Board here: ZK Jobs. Find your next job working in ZK!Ever feel like developing zero-knowledge proofs is a daunting task? The team at RISC Zero is here to remind you that it doesn't have to be that way. Their out-of-the-box tooling allows developers to access the magic of ZKProofs from any chain without needing to learn custom languages or building custom ZK circuits.Bonsai, RISC Zero’s most anticipated product, is a proving marketplace that enables any protocol or application to leverage fast ZKProofs in languages like Rust, Go, C++.Visit https://r0.link/ZKpodcast to learn more and sign up today for the Bonsai waitlist.Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.Interested in building private applications? Check out Aleo’s programming language called Leo that enables non-cryptographers to harness the power of ZKPs to deploy decentralized exchanges, hidden information games, regulated stablecoins, and more. Visit http://developer.aleo.org.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 YouTube Read transcript

In today’s episode, Anna Rose and Nico Mohnblatt interview Srinath Setty, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and author of notable works such as Spartan, Nova, SuperNova, and HyperNova. This discussion covers Setty's early work and how this led to him working on SNARKs, folding schemes and sumcheck protocols, as well as his views on the future trajectory of the ZK space. Given the current chatter around Nova-style accumulation schemes, this interview offers a chance to explore the perspective of a key contributor behind these developments.Here’s some additional links for this episode:Pepper Project Publications Depot: Cloud storage with minimal trust by Mahajan, Setty, Lee, Clement, Alvisi, Dahlin, and Walfish Resolving the conflict between generality and plausibility in verified computation by Setty, Braun, Vu, Blumberg, Parno, and Walfish Proving the correct execution of concurrent services in zero-knowledge (extended version) by Setty, Angel, Gupta and Lee Replicated state machines without replicated execution by Lee, Nikitin and Setty Quadratic Span Programs and Succinct NIZKs without PCPs by Gennaro, Gentry, Parno and Raykova Pinocchio: Nearly Practical Verifiable Computation by Parno, Howell, Gentry and Raykova Incrementally Verifiable Computation or Proofs of Knowledge Imply Time/Space Efficiency by Valiant Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments via Linear Interactive Proofs by Bitansky, Chiesa, Ishai, Ostrovsky and Paneth Open VDF: Accelerating the Nova SNARK-based VDF Article Episode 274: SNARKs: A Trilogy with Ariel GabizonZK Study Club: Supernova Srinath Setty - MS Research Check out the ZK Jobs Board here: ZK Jobs. Find your next job working in ZK!Zero-knowledge is changing the world and until now, building ZK applications meant learning new, chain-specific languages and complex cryptography. But no more!With SnarkyJS, the easiest to use zk SDK, developers can add the magic of zk to their apps using TypeScript!Whether you're targeting Mina, the leading zk-native blockchain, or off-chain applications, SnarkyJS from O(1) Labs has you covered. With support for infinite recursion, in-browser proving, and so much more, the full power of zk is available to everyone. Visit [snarkyjs.o1labs.org](snarkyjs.o1labs.org) to get started.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 YouTube Read transcript

In this week’s episode, Anna sits down with Yi Sun, co-founder of Axiom. Yi was recently on the show to discuss ZK ML’s, however this time they take a closer look at the Axiom project and what it means to be a ZK coprocessor for Ethereum. During the interview they also explore what problems Axiom are trying to solve, how ZKPs are used to help bring historic data into smart contracts and what new use cases this architecture can support. Here’s some additional links for this episode:Axiom Demo ReleaseCertifying Zero-Knowledge Circuits with Refinement Types by Junrui Liu, Ian Kretz, Hanzhi Liu, Bryan Tan, Jonathan Wang, Yi Sun Axiom, Luke Pearson, Anders Miltner Isil Dillig and Yu Feng Episode 265: Where ZK and ML intersect with Yi Sun and Daniel Kang Check out the ZK Jobs Board here: ZK Jobs. Find your next job working in ZK!Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.Interested in building private applications? Check out Aleo’s programming language called Leo that enables non-cryptographers to harness the power of ZKPs to deploy decentralized exchanges, hidden information games, regulated stablecoins, and more. Visit http://developer.aleo.org.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 YouTube Read transcript

In this week's episode, Anna Rose chats with Scroll co-founders Ye Zhang and Sandy Peng, delving into updates about their zkEVM L2, the progress they have made over the past year and what it really means to build in public. They discuss the challenges and rewards of founding a fully remote organization and how the team navigates the ever changing ZK landscape. Here’s some additional links for this episode:Scroll’s @buildwithscroll Twitter Scroll Tech GitHub Scroll’s Ecosystem Episode 234: zkEVM with Scroll’s Ye Zhang and Haichen Shen PipeZK: Accelerating Zero-Knowledge Proof with a Pipelined Architecture by Zhang, Wang, Zhang, Dong, Mao, Long, Wang, Zhou, Gao and Sun ERC-4337 Information Check out the ZK Jobs Board here: ZK Jobs. Find your next job working in ZK!Ever feel like developing zero-knowledge proofs is a daunting task? The team at RISC Zero is here to remind you that it doesn't have to be that way. Their out-of-the-box tooling allows developers to access the magic of ZKProofs from any chain without needing to learn custom languages or building custom ZK circuits.Bonsai, RISC Zero’s most anticipated product, is a proving marketplace that enables any protocol or application to leverage fast ZK proofs in languages like Rust, Go, C++.Visit https://r0.link/ZKpodcast to learn more and sign up today for the Bonsai waitlist.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 YouTube Read transcript

This week, Anna and Ariel Gabizon cover the SNARK trilogy; a history of pairing-based SNARKs in 3 acts. Starting from Jens Groth’s early works on SNARKs, Ariel takes us on a journey through key moments and breakthroughs in SNARKs over the last decade. They also dive into the emerging accumulation research on folding schemes and Ariel’s latest work surrounding lookup tables! This is an episode you won’t want to miss.Here are some additional links for this episode:Relevant Jens Groth PapersShort Non-interactive Zero-Knowledge Proofs by Jens GrothShort Pairing-based Non-interactive Zero-Knowledge Arguments by Jens Groth On the Size of Pairing-based Non-interactive Arguments by Jens GrothZero-knowledge Argument for Polynomial Evaluation with Application to Blacklists by Stephanie Bayer and Jens Groth PLONK-Relative PapersPLONK: Permutations over Lagrange-bases for Oecumenical Noninteractive arguments of Knowledge by Gabizon, Williamson, Ciobotaru HyperPlonk: Plonk with Linear-Time Prover and High-Degree Custom Gates by Chen, Bünz, Boneh and Zhang Proposal: The Turbo-PLONK program syntax for specifying SNARK programs by Gabizon and Williamson Lookup-Relative Papersplookup: A simplified polynomial protocol for lookup tables by Gabizon and Williamson Caulk: Lookup Arguments in Sublinear Time by Zapico, Buterin, Khovratovich, Maller, Nitulescu and Simkin A Close Look at a Lookup Argument - Mary Maller at The 13th BIU Winter School on cryptography cq: Cached quotients for fast lookups by Eagen, Fiore, and Gabizon Additional ResourcesPinocchio: Nearly Practical Verifiable Computation by Parno, Howell, Gentry and Raykova Sonic: Zero-Knowledge SNARKs from Linear-Size Universal and Updateable Structured Reference Strings by Maller, Bowe, Kohlweiss, and Meiklejohn Perpetual Powers of Tau GitHub Delegating Computation: Interactive Proofs for Muggles by Goldwasser, Kalai and Rothblum Efficient Zero-Knowledge Arguments for Arithmetic Circuits in Discrete Log Setting by Bootle, Cerulli, Chaidos, Groth and Petit Nova: Recursive Zero-Knowledge Arguments from Folding Schemes by Kothapalli, Setty and Tzialla Episode 232: Cutting Edge ZK Research with Mary Maller ZK Whiteboard Sessions - Module Six: Lookup Tables for Performance Optimisation Check out the ZK Jobs Board here: ZK Jobs. Anoma’s first fractal instance Namada is launching soon! Namada is a proof-of-stake L1 for interchain asset-agnostic privacy. Namada natively interoperates with fast-finality chains via IBC and with Ethereum via a trustless two-way bridge. Follow Namada on twitter @namada for more information and join the community on Discord discord.gg/namada. 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 YouTube Read transcript

In this week’s episode, host Anna Rose sits down with Zac Williamson, the CEO of Aztec. Anna and Zac dive deep into the history of Plonk, one of the most important proving systems to emerge in the last 5 years. Zac explains how the initial ideas came to be, how it was developed with co-author Ariel Gabizon, and how the system has evolved over time, branching out into many different iterations of Plonk, leading up to his recent work on Goblin Plonk.The conversation also touches on Aztec's cutting-edge technology stack, including their Noir zkDSL and their planned private programmable L2, Aztec 3. Zac shares his insights on the state of ZK applications and folding schemes, and provides a glimpse into the future of the ZK space.Here’s some additional links for this episode:StarkWare Sessions 23 | Privacy Preserving Smart Contract Architectures | Zac Williamson High Level Overview of Goblin Plonk: lazy recursive proof composition by Zac Williamson Spec for Goblin Plonk: lazy recursive proof composition by Zac Williamson Goblin Plonk Slides by Zac Williamson Episode 75: Exploring Aztec with Zac WilliamsonEpisode 112: Dive into Plonk!Episode 176: Zk-zk-rollup & zk.money with Zac and Joe from Aztec Episode 236: Aztec Connect and Private DeFi with Charlie and Joe Episode 237: Exploring ZK Research with Jens Groth Episode 242: Halo 2 with Daira Hopwood and Str4d ZK Whiteboard Sessions – Interview with Ariel Gabizon on The PLONK Origin Story and Roadmap ZK8: Hyperplonk: PLONK without FFTs and with high degree gates - Benedikt Bünz Check out the ZK Jobs Board here: ZK Jobs. Find your next job working in ZK!Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.Interested in building private applications? Check out Aleo’s programming language called Leo that enables non-cryptographers to harness the power of ZKPs to deploy decentralized exchanges, hidden information games, regulated stablecoins, and more. Visit http://developer.aleo.org.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 YouTube Read transcript

This week, Anna Rose interviews Avery Ching, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Aptos Labs. They cover Avery’s working history, including his time working on Meta’s Blockchain project, what this experience meant to him and how this led to the creation of Aptos. They discuss Aptos as it stands today, Avery’s experience of building in the current market and the unique qualities of the Aptos project.Here are some additional links for this episode:HotStuff: BFT Consensus with Linearity and Responsiveness by Maofan Yin, Dahlia Malkhi, Michael K. Reiter, Guy Golan Gueta and Ittai AbrahamNarwhal and Tusk: A DAG-based Mempool and Efficient BFT Consensus by George Danezis, Eleftherios Kokoris Kogias, Alberto Sonnino, Alexander SpiegelmanCheck out the ZK Jobs Board here: ZK Jobs. Anoma’s first fractal instance Namada is launching soon! Namada is a proof-of-stake L1 for interchain asset-agnostic privacy. Namada natively interoperates with fast-finality chains via IBC and with Ethereum via a trustless two-way bridge. Follow Namada on twitter @namada for more information and join the community on Discord discord.gg/namada. 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 Youtube Read transcript

This week, Anna Rose chats with ZK Podcast regular Guillermo Angeris, Head of Research at BCC and Nicolas Mohnblatt, Researcher and Cryptographer at Geometry. This was recorded on April 3rd 2023, the day between the ZK Hack Lisbon hackathon and the zkSummit9 event. They discuss Nico's move from music to cryptography, his earlier privacy research as a Master's student, and his recent research Sangria, which is a folding scheme for Plonk. Guillermo shares some of his current work cleaning up and formalising concepts in zk. And Anna shares some brief thoughts about the recent release of zkpod.ai - the friendly ZK bot featuring Anna’s voice and containing the entirety of the ZKPodcast knowledge (built by Kobi Gurkan). They also chat about some news, insights from ZK Hack Lisbon and some of the projects that were built there and generally check in on the state of the ecosystem. Relevant links: Sangria: a Folding Scheme for PLONK - Geometry Research ZK9: Sangria is relaxed PLONK a Nova-like folding scheme for PLONK – Nicolas Mohnblatt (Geometry)Plonk isn’t real - Zac’s tweet confessionZK Hack Lisbon closing ceremonyZK Hack Lisbon Winner's list Twitter postZK Hack Lisbon projects & websitezkSummit video playlist (including part of the zkSummit9 videos - more coming soon!)zkpod.ai announcement tweet from Kobi GurkanAnna's reaction to zkpod.aiCheck out the ZK Jobs Board here: ZK Jobs. Find your next job working in ZK!Anoma’s first fractal instance Namada is launching soon! Namada is a proof-of-stake L1 for interchain asset-agnostic privacy. Namada natively interoperates with fast-finality chains via IBC and with Ethereum via a trustless two-way bridge. Follow Namada on twitter @namada for more information and join the community on Discord discord.gg/namada. 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 YouTube Read transcript

This week Anna Rose chats with Ravital Solomon, founder of Sunscreen. They cover her early interest in lattice-based cryptography and how this paved the way for her work on FHE, starting at NuCypher then with her startup Sunscreen. They dive into the challenges involved when building with FHE as well as exploring the power in combining ZKP and FHE. They also discuss the early emergence of lattice-based zero knowledge proofs.Here are some additional links for this episode:Episode 269: Auctions with Kshitij Kulkarni, Matheus V. X. Ferreira and Tarun Sunscreen TwitterSunscreen Website zkSummit6: Beating the Flash Boys with Fully Homomorphic Encryption + ZKPs Ravital Solomon NuCypher Check out the ZK Jobs Board here: ZK Jobs. Polygon zkEVM is here. This performant, ZK-powered, open-source, EVM-equivalent rollup launched its Mainnet Beta last month. Polygon zkEVM is making scaling truly frictionless—fast finality and EVM-equivalence means devs can do everything they can do with the EVM, only cheaper. To connect to Polygon zkEVM, go to Polygon.technology 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 Youtube Read transcript

In this week's episode Anna Rose and Tarun Chitra explore the topic of auctions with guests Kshitij Kulkarni, PHD student at Berkeley’s EECS department and Matheus V. X. Ferreira, Postdoctoral Fellow in Computer Science at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. They discuss the history of auctions, both in the real world and in blockchain, and go on to cover more recent blockchain uses, such as MEV and NFT auctions. They review the incentives of both auction holders and the participants as well as how this incentive design can influence the effectiveness of the auctions themselves. Here are some additional links for this episode:Credibility and Incentives in Gradual Dutch Auctions by Kulkarni, Ferreira and ChitraCredible, Optimal Auctions via Blockchains by Kulkarni, Ferreira and Chitra Optimal Strategic Mining Against Cryptographic Self-Selection in Proof-of-Stake by Kulkarni, Ferreira and ChitraCredible Auctions: A Trilemma by Akbarpour and LiCredible, Truthful, and Two-Round (Optimal) Auctions via Cryptographic Commitments by Ferreira and Weinberg Credible, Strategyproof, Optimal, and Bounded Expected-Round Single-Item Auctions for all Distributions by Essaidi, Ferreira and Weinberg Dynamic Posted-Price Mechanisms for the Blockchain Transaction Fee Market by Ferreira, Moroz, Parkes and Stern Proof-of-Stake Mining Games with Perfect Randomness by Ferreira and Weinberg Optimal Strategic Mining Against Cryptographic Self-Selection in Proof-of-Stake by Ferreira, Hahn, Weinberg, Yu Credible Decentralized Exchange Design via Verifiable Sequencing Rules by Ferreira and Parkes https://jumpcrypto.com/thepit/zkweek/ Find out more about zkSummit9 here: zksummit.com.Apply for ZK Hack Lisbon here: ZK Hack application Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.Interested in building private applications? Check out Aleo’s programming language called Leo by visiting http://developer.aleo.org.You can also participate in 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 YouTube Read transcript