Zero Knowledge

In this week’s episode, host Anna Rose chats with Chhi'mèd Künzang and François Garillot from Lurk Labs about all things Lurk, Lisp and zk languages.They discuss the history of the Lurk project, from its beginnings with Protocol Labs (the team that built Filecoin), to its emergence as a Turing-complete programming language for recursive zkSNARKs. They discuss Lurk’s relationship with Lisp, what Lisp is, and how developers familiar with that family of languages would be able to interact with Lurk. They then discuss how Lurk compares to other zkDSLs and the new innovations this Lisp-based language brings to the table.Here’s some additional links for this episode:Programming Languages Circom Arkworks GitHub Leo by Aleo SnarkyJS Noir Lurk LinksLURK: Lambda, the Ultimate Recursive Knowledge by Amin, Burnham, Garillot, Gennaro, Künzang, Rogozin and Wong Lurk Lab Lurk Lab TwitterLurk Language Lurk GitHubAdditional Reading/ListeningA Sloth-based Verifiable Delay Function (VDF) evaluator and SNARK prover GitHub Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine, Part I by John McCarthy, April 1960 Using ZK Proofs to Fight Disinformation By Trisha Datta and Dan Boneh Common Lisp Episode 172: ZK languages with Alex OzdemirzkSessions: The ZK Languages RundownzkSummit4 Videos - check the playlist for individual talks!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 ZK proofs 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.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 dives back into accumulation schemes with Benedikt Bünz and Binyi Chen from Espresso Systems. They discuss ProtoStar and how it compares to works such as Nova and HyperNova, as well as explore some definitions for commonly used terms in the accumulation literature. Here’s some additional links for this episode:Espresso Systems CAPE Espresso Sequencer Bulletproofs: Short Proofs for Confidential Transactions and More by Bünz, Bootle, Boneh, Poelstra, Wuille and Maxwell Verifiable Delay Functions by Boneh, Bonneau, Bünz and Fisch HyperPlonk: Plonk with Linear-Time Prover and High-Degree Custom Gates by Chen, Bünz, Boneh and Zhang Protostar: Generic Efficient Accumulation/Folding for Special-sound Protocols by Bünz and Chen Proof-Carrying Data without Succinct Arguments by Bünz, Chiesa, Lin, Mishra and Spooner Proof-Carrying Data from Accumulation Schemes by Bünz, Chiesa, Mishra, and Spooner Multivariate lookups based on logarithmic derivatives by Haböck Halo Infinite: Proof-Carrying Data from Additive Polynomial Commitments by Boneh, Drake, Fisch, Gabizon Incrementally Verifiable Computation or Proofs of Knowledge Imply Time/Space Efficiency by Valiant Recursive Proof Composition without a Trusted Setup by Bowe, Grigg, and Hopwood Episode 40: Benedikt Bünz on Bulletproofs and Verifiable Delay FunctionsEpisode 277: Nova and Beyond with Srinath Setty Check out the ZK Jobs Board here: ZK Jobs. Find your next job working in ZK!Aztec Network is building a next-generation encrypted blockchain powered by Ethereum. The team is proud to announce Noir - the world's first universal zk-language. Noir makes it safe and intuitive to write zk circuits and encrypted smart contracts, enabling novel use-cases like encrypted DeFi, private governance, and zk gaming.As a universal language, Noir is domain-specific, but blockchain agnostic. Build powerful zk applications compatible with multiple proving systems and verify your program on any EVM chain.Get started with Noir today at docs.aztec.network/noir 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 bonus episode, Anna jumps back on the mic for a quick follow-up to Episode 279: Intro to zkpod.ai. Guest Daniel Kang describes a joint project he is doing with zkpod.ai - the Attested Audio Experiment. The objective is to prove that some piece of audio originates from a "real" (non-ai-generated) recording, even if this audio has been altered through edits or modifications. The goal is to differentiate between original "real" audio and the audio generated by zkpod.ai. In the future some iteration of this architecture could be used by content creators to distinguish deepfake audio from the real thing. Here is the write up about the Attested Audio Experiment on Daniel Kang's blog. Here is some of his other work as well: https://medium.com/@danieldkang/empowering-users-to-verify-twitters-algorithmic-integrity-with-zkml-65e56d0e9dd9 https://medium.com/@danieldkang/verified-execution-of-gpt-bert-clip-and-more-6acb693fd55f Follow @zkpodai on twitter for more updates!

This week, Anna Rose and Kobi Gurkan continue their conversation with a full episode dedicated to their new side project zkpod.ai - the voice ai trained on transcripts from this show which uses both Anna and Kobi’s voices to share insights and answer questions about zk topics. They cover the origin of the project and discuss their motivations and concerns around its uses as well as how they could see the project developing and what this could mean for the field of zk. Kobi shares his thoughts on the current tooling available, where this could progress and potential limitations it holds. Additional links mentioned in this episode:zkpod.ai Website Anna Rose’s zkpod.ai Blog Post Yohei Nakajima TwitterLangChain WebsiteWeaviate Website Anthropic Product ‘Claude’Universal Paperclips: the game by Frank Lantz Large Language Models can be used to effectively scale Spear Phishing campaigns by Hazell Creating Word Embeddings: Coding the Word2Vec Algorithm in Python using Deep Learning Check 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. For privacy, Namada deploys an upgraded version of the multi-asset shielded pool (MASP) circuit that allows all assets (fungible and non-fungible) to share a common shielded set – this removes the size limits of the anonymity set and provides the best privacy guarantees possible for every user in the multichain.The MASP circuit's latest update enables shielded set rewards directly in the shielded set, a novel feature that funds privacy as a public good. Follow Namada on twitter @namada for more information and join the community on Discord discord.gg/namada. 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](snarkyjs.o1labs.org) 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, 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