In this week’s episode, we catch up with Izaak Meckler from 0(1) Labs to talk about launching a recursive snark based incentivised test net, a recap of recursive SNARKs, updates on the working SNARKitecture, and a look at what's next for the project. We also touch on some new use-cases and ideas for how zkps may be a component in making computer programmes potentially more accountable to their users. Please listen to our earlier episode with Izaak and Evan to get a full picture of 0(1)Labs and t...
Jan 22, 2020•52 min
In this week’s episode, we learn more about Plonk with Ariel Gabizon and Zac Williamson from Aztec . PLONK is a recent highly efficient, universal SNARK construction. We explore what distinguishes Plonk from some other other new constructions including their focus on Lagrange-bases to deconstruct complex problem statements into simple polynomial identities. This episode goes very deep and so we do recommend you check out a few of previous episodes to help you follow along! All mentioned can be f...
Jan 15, 2020•56 min
In this week’s episode, we chat with Roman Storm and Roman Semanov from Tornado.cash all about mixers. We explore what they are used for and how they work, how Zero Knowledge can be incorporated to provide more privacy, what the challenges are and what the future holds for the Tornado.Cash project. Here are some episodes or resources we mention: https://tornado.cash/ https://medium.com/@tornado.cash/tornado-cash-version-2-has-been-released-8c739d3706df https://github.com/tornadocash https://www....
Jan 08, 2020•1 hr 2 min
In this end of year episode, we chat about what we've learned in 2019, some of our favourite episodes, this year's explosion in ZK research and what we are looking forward to in 2020! Thanks to Henrik José for updated jingle! We mention a number of episodes from this past year, have a look through our episodes here: https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/ For the Zk Specific episodes have a look here: https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/zkseries Give the Zero Knowledge Podcast some feedback. Whether you are a lo...
Jan 01, 2020•49 min
In this week’s episode, Anna sits down with Daniel Benarroch and Aviv Zohar from QEDIT - a privacy software startup focused on bringing Zero Knowledge to enterprise customers. We chat about the power of zero knowledge proof systems, some of the emerging use cases using zk systems and The Zero Knowledge Standardization Effort . Here are some links we mention: Aviv's website Hilbert's problems - twenty-three unsolved problems in mathematics presented in 1900 Give the Zero Knowledge Podcast some fe...
Dec 25, 2019•1 hr 5 min
This week we catch up with Zaki Manian, Director at Tendermint , the company building Cosmos architecture, and co-founder of Iqlusion Validator. We chat about the blockchain in Silicon Valley, why SF loves DeFi, the challenge of balancing pragmatism and regulation with a decentralised ideology, the nuances of PoS systems, the wins of 2019 and what is on the horizon. Here are links to a few things we discuss: - Tarun Chitra's paper on how the existance of derivatives can undermine the security of...
Dec 18, 2019•56 min
In this week’s episode, we catch-up our friend Lucas Vogelsang from Centrifuge . Centrifuge is an open, decentralized platform to connect the global financial supply chain. We chat about the journey Lucas took to co-founding this company, how privacy plays a role in his thinking and we discover what it means to be a project building with zkSNARKs today. We touch on a few previous episodes including: Zooko talks Zcash on our 50th episode Zokrates with Jacob Eberhardt Circom & Snarkjs from the...
Dec 11, 2019•1 hr 2 min
In this week's episode, we chat with Juan Benet , founder of Protocol Labs , about IPFS , Libp2p , and the much anticipated incentivised decentralised storage protocol Filecoin . We dig into the history of the Filecoin project, the gap in the “market” they are trying to fill, the challenges they have found in the development of the Filecoin protocol and the latest tech they are exploring. Here are some helpful links: https://ipfs.io/ https://libp2p.io/ https://filecoin.io/ https://protocol.ai/ h...
Dec 04, 2019•1 hr 11 min
In this week’s episode, we catchup with Alan Szepieniec, a researchers at Nervos and co-author of the Supersonics paper & the Marvellous family of Hash Functions (which specify the Vision/Rescue cyphers). We chat about his past work in cryptography, how the Supersonics paper came to be, and dive into the new generation of hash functions emerging, including the Marvelous universe. For more info, please have a look at these resources and past episodes! Design of Symmetric-Key Primitives for Ad...
Nov 27, 2019•49 min
In this week’s episode, Anna chats with Fredrik and Nicole Zhu , Developer at Parity Technologies , about the experimental Polkadot Canary Network they call Kusama . We cover how Kusama was developed, the goals of this format and what launching a Chaos Canary Network is all about. Here is a few more links: https://twitter.com/kusamanetwork https://kusama.network/ Zero Knowledge Podcast is also looking for some feedback! Whether you are a long-time listener of the Zero Knowledge Podcast, or new t...
Nov 20, 2019•58 min
In this week’s episode, we sit down with Joseph Bonneau , Assistant Professor at NYU and co-author on the Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs) paper. We discuss VDFs, what they are, how they were developed and what they can be used for. Here are a few links that we reference: Blockchain 101: Randomness episode with Justin Drake Verifiable Delay Functions by Dan Boneh, Joseph Bonneau, Benedikt Bünz, and Ben Fisch vdfresearch.org Numbers Game A Programmer Solved a 20-Year-Old, Forgotten Crypto Puzzle...
Nov 13, 2019•1 hr 6 min
In this week’s episode, we chat with Brandon Ramirez , Research Lead and co-founder of The Graph , about the problem the project is trying to solve, the fast evolving Layer1-Layer2 paradigm, the emerging group of Service Protocols, and how these projects interact with other elements of the Web3 stack. Introduction of GraphQL The Graph protocol design Talk on trust-minimized services More on Service Protocols from Arjun (NuCypher) More on Service Protocols from Yondon (LivePeer) Give us feedback!...
Nov 06, 2019•54 min
In this week’s episode, we chat with Yan Michalevsky , CTO & Co-founder, Anjuna Security about their work with TEEs, a continuation of topic we covered in episode 82 of this podcast . In this episode, we go deeper and cover Intel SGX vs AMD memory, the risk profiles, tooling for TEEs, how zk techniques can be used alongside TEEs, applications of enclaves and how these techniques are being optimized for. Here are some of the ideas we covered: A Comparison Study of Intel SGX and AMD Memory Enc...
Oct 30, 2019•51 min
In this, our special 100th episode of the Zero Knowledge Podcast, we caught up with Dan Boneh , professor and researcher in applied cryptography and computer security at Stanford. In this far-reaching conversation, we talk about Dan's background in the field of cryptography, how the field has evolved over the years, his work on cryptography & blockchain education, where zero knowledge research and SNARKs in particular fits into the field, some exciting new research coming out of the Applied ...
Oct 23, 2019•1 hr 34 min
In this week's episode, Anna catches up with Tarun Chitra ( Gauntlet Networks ), James Prestwich ( Summa ) and Georgios Konstantopoulos on the last day of Devcon5 in Osaka. In this special 99th episode, we cover a broad range of topics from their Devcon take-aways, emerging ideas in the ecosystem, the latest in PoS systems, Roll-up and DeFi, to the explosion in zero knowledge research, and more. We mention the following episodes, presentations and articles in our talk: James Prestwich talks Smar...
Oct 16, 2019•59 min
In this week’s episode, Anna sits down with with Alexander Zaidelson and Alex Romanov from BEAM - a Mimblewimble based privacy coin. We discuss how this implementation of the MimbleWimble protocol differs from Grin, how the two groups work together, funding protocol development, how the Beam business model works, and the future of the protocol. Here is our previous episode about Grin Here are a few links of topics we discuss: MimbleWimble Whitepaper Beam Position Paper Thank you to our sponsor t...
Oct 09, 2019•55 min
In this week’s episode, we chat with Daniel Lehnberg about Grin - an implementation of the MimbleWimble privacy protocol. We cover the story behind MimbleWimble, how Grin first came to be, and how this technology works. We also look back at how this protocol came to be as well as were Daniel sees it going. Here are a few links of topics we discuss: MimbleWimble Whitepaper Grin Tech Step by step walkthrough of Grin transactions What’s inside a Grin transaction file Grin’s monetary model Slides an...
Oct 02, 2019•1 hr 1 min
In this week’s episode, Anna catches up with Eli Ben Sasson to talk about the latest from StarkWare , the explosion of new research within the zero knowledge space and the origin of new mathematical ideas. Recorded right after the StarkWare Sessions in tel aviv, and during a period of incredible development in new cryptographic zk techniques and protocol proposals. Here are some of the papers and ideas we cover: STARK-friendly hash competition Succinct Arguments in the Quantum Random Oracle Mode...
Sep 25, 2019•56 min
In this episode, we chat with the Oleg Andreev, a protocol architect from Stellar, about zkVM, the zero-knowledge virtual machine. In this episode, we learn a little bit about the history of Stellar, Chain and the zkVM project. We touch on the general concepts of VMs as well as compare zkVM with some other zero knowledge protocols like ZCash and ZEXE. Some other episodes you may want to check out before listening to this episode: ZEXE Zcash Bulletproofs Thank you to this week's sponsor Apograf! ...
Sep 18, 2019•51 min
In this episode, Anna chats with Friederike Ernst from Gnosis about their work on prediction markets, wallet security, exchanges, and the co-working space Full Node in Berlin - a hub for the blockchain community that Friederike spearheaded. Some links that were mentioned: sight.pm Phil Daian's front-running article slow.trade Full Node Berlin Thank you to this week's sponsor [Trail of Bits](trailofbits.com) Trail of Bits recently releases their smart contract audit executive summary. They aggreg...
Sep 11, 2019•58 min
In this episode, we chat with the Marek Olszewski & Kobi Gurkan from Celo about their proof-of-stake protocol, their work on making a mobile-ready light client, how zero knowledge proofs can help to make a light client “lighter”, why this would be desirable and what potential such a construction could unlock. Some ideas and episodes: BLS signatures Coda Episode Zexe Episode Bridges and xDai with Igor Thank you to our sponsor this week Aragon One . If you love working with talented designers ...
Sep 04, 2019•50 min
In this episode, Anna catches up with Jorge Izquierdo from Aragon One to talk about the beginning of the Aragon project, the history of DAOs, as well as the challenges and potential in these new organisational entities. Here are some links we mentioned: What is a DAO The ZK ep with Griff Green on The DAO Vermont Legal DAO Framework on Open Law Thank you to this week's sponsor Apograf! Apograf has built an extensive collection of open access research papers on cryptography, distributed computer s...
Aug 28, 2019•55 min
In this episode, we sit down with Alexander Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin from Near Protocol to find out about their work. We discuss what brought them to develop Near Protocol, how they used their whiteboard sessions to learn from the best people in the space, the challenge of blockchain UX, and what has motivated them to become one of the fastest moving projects around. Links: Near for developers: https://studio.nearprotocol.com/ Whiteboard session: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9tzQ...
Aug 21, 2019•1 hr
In this week's episode, we chat with Nigel Smart , Professor of Cryptology at KU Leuven and the co-founder of Unbound Tech , about his background in cryptology, the history of MPC systems, MPC systems in the real world, and how MPC stacks up versus other related cryptography and privacy techniques. He helps us better understand where MPC comes from, the power of this technology and shares some emerging MPC research topics that he is excited about. Here are some of the papers or concepts mentione...
Aug 14, 2019•57 min
In this week’s episode, we invite Raul Jordan from Prysmatic Labs back to our show. He shares an update about Prysmatic Labs and ETH2.0 development. We cover some of the latest innovations, some existing challenges, timelines, implementation challenges and more. We also touch on an article that Raul published about the Libra protocol, and talk about how it compares to the public blockchains we all know and love. You can find this here: https://www.tokendaily.co/blog/a-close-look-at-libra-s-sourc...
Aug 07, 2019•58 min
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 contex...
Jul 31, 2019•1 hr 2 min
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: Ethfinex Phil Daian's Flash Boys 2.0: Frontrunning, Transaction Reordering, and Consensus Instability in Decentralized Exchanges If you like what we do: Follow us on T...
Jul 24, 2019•59 min
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 parad...
Jul 17, 2019•52 min
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 Split For more on the protocol, check out: Zexe: Enabling Decentralized Private Computation Paper https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/962.pdf Zexe Library - https://github.com/scipr-lab/zexe This talk by Pratyush at SBC '19: htt...
Jul 10, 2019•46 min
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 wo...
Jul 03, 2019•43 min
