This week, Anna catches up with Zaki Manian and his new project Sommelier . They explore how Sommelier aims to develop strategies to better serve the more complex emerging DeFi projects like Uniswap V3, and how this would allow the average user to benefit from these new powerful tools. They also discuss Zaki’s vision for multichain DeFi and how the space has evolved over the last few years. Here are a few links for this episode: iqlusion Validator Episode 108: Catch up with Zaki Manian from Tend...
Oct 13, 2021•57 min
200th Episode of Zero Knowledge Podcast! This week, Anna chats with Alessandro Chiesa , a professor working on cryptography, complexity and security and one of the co-founders Zcash and StarkWare. Anna and Ale dig into some of the recent SNARK research coming out of his lab and discuss how to navigate the challenges of teaching in a space that changes quickly. Here are some links for this episode: Episode 59: STARKs & StarkWare with Eli and Alessandro Episode 114: Exploring the Fractal trans...
Oct 06, 2021•1 hr 5 min
In this week’s episode, Anna chats with Emre Tekişalp and [Izaak Meckler](twitter.com/izmeckler) about what’s new with Mina, O(1) Labs, the network launch and of course the anticipated release of Snapps to testnet later this year. We learn all about how Snapps, these SNARK-powered applications, bring data privacy and scalability to blockchain. Here are a few links for this episode: Latest recursive SNARKitecture with Izaak Meckler from O(1)Labs Zero Knowledge Podcast, Episode 113 Digging into re...
Sep 29, 2021•1 hr 1 min
In this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun dive back into the NFT space with their guest Luiz from FingerprintsDAO . FingerprintsDAO is a collector organization for artists, curators and producers. Luiz takes us through new paradigms of NFT creation, its governance and the wild world of on-chain art where it’s the smart contract that is the art and wherein the value lies. Here are some links mentioned this episode: Episode 150: NFTs & Rarible with Alex Salnikov FingerprintsDAO Autoglyphs DEAFBEE...
Sep 22, 2021•1 hr 12 min
This week, Anna chats with Pedro Gomes , Founder of WalletConnect, about how wallets and DApps traditionally interact and the journey to WalletConnect and WalletConnect 2.0. They explore how the tech incorporates the Waku protocol, as well as the role of CAIPs (Chain Agnostic Improvement Proposals) in determining how WalletConnect evolves. Pedro shares what prompted the new WalletConnect 2.0 development decisions and his thoughts on what role the project will play in a MultiChain future. Here ar...
Sep 15, 2021•1 hr 8 min
This week, Anna chats with Harry Halpin , the CEO of the Nym project, about a variety of topics related to privacy, politics and the need to build censorship-resistant systems. Harry talks about his early involvement in cryptography and his changing perspectives on capitalism as a tool for good. He shares how Nym aims to protect blockchain transactions from network-based deanonymization attacks. Here are a few links mentioned in this episode: Mixnets and privacy technology with Claudia Diaz from...
Sep 08, 2021•1 hr 18 min
This week, Anna and James chat with Joseph Delong , CTO of Sushi, who talks about everything that’s happened since the initial SushiSwap genesis and the gradual transition into a large organization capable of shipping multiple products: MISO, Kashi, BentoBox and the upcoming Trident. Joseph then dives into a few of the recent events like the MISO vulnerability, the scrapped VC raise, the Optimism deployment and the relationship with Paradigm. Here are a few links for this episode: A Tale of Sush...
Sep 01, 2021•1 hr
This week, Anna chats with Jordi Baylina and David Schwartz from Hermez about their zkEVM design that was first revealed at EthCC. Jordi and David explain the design choices such as why they push for recreating the EVM, how it’s done at a technical level and how Hermez’s approach is different from other zk teams like Matter Labs and StarkWare. The original recording was done before the news of the merger with Polygon came out, so the trio came back together for a brief chat about what it means a...
Aug 25, 2021•1 hr 3 min
No full episode this week, but we just wanted to let you know about the brand new zeroknowledge.fm website! Finally, we have a site that brings together all the different parts of the ZK Community: podcast episodes, upcoming and past events, blog, social channels and more. We also have a new updated ZK Jobs Board featuring zk focused job opportunities, as well as a new ZK Community Forum where we can share new research! Zeroknowledge.fm is now the spot to find out whats up in zk. In the coming m...
Aug 18, 2021•3 min
This week, Anna chats with Brian Fabian Crain , a fellow podcaster from Epicenter , founder of Chorus One and an early member of the Berlin crypto community. The conversation starts from Brian’s early involvement in Bitcoin in 2013 and his role in the local Berlin community, leading him to launch the Epicenter podcast. Brian then tells his story of founding Chorus One, a validator whose history is tightly connected to that of Cosmos as a whole, finally moving into the present day of bridges, liq...
Aug 11, 2021•1 hr 3 min
This week, Anna and Tarun host Tracheopteryx and Facu , two core devs at Yearn.finance, to take an introductory dive into the past and present of Yearn. Starting from Yearn’s spontaneous assembly in the Summer of DeFi (2020), Trach & Facu tell their personal stories of how they joined the project and where it got to since. The conversation then moves into the yDAO and its current “Constrained Delegation” model, the "nebulous" concept of Yearn products, the mergers, Andre Cronje’s role in the...
Aug 04, 2021•1 hr
This week, Anna and Josh chat with Jill Gunter (nèe Carlson), a well-known investor and crypto advocate, to dive deep into the eternal dilemma of privacy vs. transparency and how ZKPs can finally give us the tools to be more nuanced about our society’s approach to privacy. Starting from Jill’s background as a bond trader on Wall Street, the conversation quickly shifts into how the need for transparency in the financial system and the ability to root out bad actors clashes with the need to mainta...
Jul 28, 2021•1 hr 9 min
This week, Anna chats with John Light and Samuel JJ Gosling , two passionate privacy advocates and DAO thinkers. This topic was brought up in a recent zkSessions focused on Privacy in NFTs and DAOs spurring a deeper dive into the subject. John brings his past experience at Aragon, and now Sovryn, to discuss what is a DAO and what are its needs in privacy and collusion protection. Samuel brings the on the ground view from his involvement in Tornado governance and current work with MACI. Here are ...
Jul 21, 2021•1 hr 12 min
This week, Anna chats with Kristy-Leigh Minehan , a crypto and mining veteran primarily known for developing the ProgPow hashing algorithm. She offers a unique and in-depth perspective into the world of Proof of Work mining, starting from the early days of Bitcoin and moving into the first Bitcoin ASICs, the Ethereum GPU mining era, all the way to the present day of staking dominance. Some of these stories come from Kristy’s direct involvement in Genesis Mining, Core Scientific, ProgPow and her ...
Jul 14, 2021•1 hr 12 min
This week, Anna and Tarun chat with Sunny Aggarwal and Dev Ojha about their new project Osmosis, an AMM built into the Cosmos ecosystem using the IBC interoperability protocol. Osmosis brings some interesting innovations to the AMM table, starting from the seamless IBC integration to customizable bonding curves and per-pool governance to promote experimentation. Sunny and Dev are also very passionate about the topic of MEV, diving into the various types of value extraction, how MEV is mitigated ...
Jul 07, 2021•1 hr 18 min
This week James and Anna chat with Ben Edgington , Lead Product Manager for Teku, an Eth2 client developed by ConsenSys. Ben recounts his story of the involvement with Ethereum 2.0 from the very early months of Serenity and Shasper, and how those were completely replaced by the Beacon Chain concept that resulted in Ethereum 2.0 as we know it. Ben then highlights what changed after Phase 0 launch: the simplification of Phase 1 & 2 , the rollup-centric roadmap and the upcoming Merge with Eth1....
Jun 30, 2021•1 hr 4 min
This week, Anna chats with Oskar Thoren and Sanaz Taheri-Boshrooyeh from Status to learn about their work on Waku, a decentralized messaging protocol incorporating zk-SNARKs for spam protection. Waku is the successor of Whisper, a messaging protocol that turned out to be too resource-heavy and vulnerable to spamming. Oskar and Sanaz explain how Waku V2 changes things, from ZKP-based spam protection to how its new networking system based on libp2p and Gossipsub can scale globally. Here are some l...
Jun 23, 2021•44 min
This week Anna and Tarun host Noah Zinsmeister and Moody Salem to learn all about Uniswap and the recent Uniswap V3 deployment. Noah and Moody go through the history of Uniswap from its EF grant days to Unisocks, Uniswap V2 and now Uniswap V3 and its ranged liquidity model. They explain all the benefits as well as the potential drawbacks, and how the project plans to fix them in a likely indirect way. At the end the conversation shifts into a multi-L2 deployment future and how that may increase ...
Jun 16, 2021•1 hr 8 min
This week Anna chats with Adrian Brink , co-founder of the Anoma Network and long-time crypto builder. Adrian explains all there is to know about the new privacy-centric network, diving into concepts like fractal scaling, the validity predicate-based account model, the solution against front-running in Ferveo & much more. Here are some links for the episode: CowSwap & DAO Tech with Gnosis’s Martin Köppelmann, Zero Knowledge episode 183 Through the Cosmos Stargate Upgrade, Zero Knowledge ...
Jun 09, 2021•52 min
This week Anna and Tarun chat with Martin Köppelmann , CEO of Gnosis. The company was known for championing prediction markets, but Gnosis has now shifted to making key infrastructure products. Martin chats about this transition and explains Gnosis’s current products, which include a unique DEX called CowSwap and a number of products for managing DAO treasuries and governance. Here are some links for this episode: Gnosis & Full Node with Friederike Ernst, Zero Knowledge episode 94 SafeSnap i...
Jun 02, 2021•1 hr 4 min
This week Anna and James chat with Elena Nadolinski , founder of Iron Fish, about the new privacy network and what led her to this point. Elena recounts her journey into crypto, starting from AirBnB and falling into the rabbit hole of Ethereum hackathons, Solidity, and NFTs, eventually leading her to exploration of zero knowledge proofs for honest computation. This deep dive into SNARKs and Sapling led to the creation of Beanstalk, later Iron Fish, which aims to be the shielded pool for all othe...
May 26, 2021•53 min
This week Anna and Tarun chat with Andy Chorlian . Andy recounts the many interesting moments through his crypto journey, including being at Maker during Black Thursday, living through DeFi Summer, and then jumping into NFTs with Top Shot and PleasrDAO. Taking a break from his degen career, Andy is now developing Fractional, a protocol for fractionalizing NFTs. He explains how it works under the hood and how the concept could bridge the DeFi and NFT worlds. Here are some links for this episode: ...
May 19, 2021•1 hr 5 min
This week, Anna and James chat with Antonio Juliano , founder of dYdX, a derivatives exchange on Ethereum that recently transitioned to a StarkEx-powered L2 infrastructure. Antonio brings a product-centric perspective to using scalability tech. He explains the choice of going for StarkWare’s products and how it compares to other layer ones or rollups. The conversation delves into questions like dYdX’s position in the decentralization spectrum, how that is going to change in the future, and what ...
May 12, 2021•54 min
This week, Anna and James host Ed Felten and Steven Goldfeder , co-founders of Arbitrum, an Optimistic Rollup project born before the term "Optimistic Rollup" was even coined. Ed and Steven tell Arbitrum’s story, from its beginnings as a chain-agnostic university project in 2014 to become an Ethereum-based Optimistic L2 Rollup solution based on fraud proofs. They cover Arbitrum’s interactive fraud proofs, how they differ from other solutions like Optimism, and how Arbitrum and the Optimistic Rol...
May 05, 2021•1 hr 1 min
This week, Anna chats with Alberto Garoffolo from Horizen Labs for their upcoming Zendoo protocol and Latus sidechain proposal. The episode centers around the world of sidechains for UTXO-based blockchains such as Horizen or Zcash. The Horizen team has developed Latus and Zendoo, a SNARK-powered mechanism for designing trustless sidechains. Alberto explains how Horizen’s Zendoo system works under the hood to connect a mainchain with a set of sidechains built for specific purposes, while Latus’s ...
Apr 28, 2021•55 min
This week, Anna and James chat with Ben Jones and Mark Tyneway from Optimism, the builders of Optimistic Ethereum. The interview continues the series of L2-focused episodes we have been airing on the Zero Knowledge Podcast and comes just as Optimism gears up for launch. Anna, James, Ben and Mark discuss the inner workings of their Optimistic Rollup, diving deep into concepts like data availability, the fraud proof, the role of the sequencer and the rollup’s complex relationship with layer-one. B...
Apr 21, 2021•1 hr 10 min
In this week’s episode, Anna chats with Zac Williamson and Joe Andrews , respectively CTO and Head of Product at Aztec. The episode is centered on Aztec’s latest release, zk.money, the “zk-zk-rollup” that targets privacy and scalability at the same time. zk.money allows users to shield their Ethereum-based assets while achieving a higher transaction count, a result that took months of research and development of the TurboPLONK. Zac and Joe explain how it works down to the nitty-gritty of ellipti...
Apr 14, 2021•55 min
In today’s episode, Anna chats with Alex Gluchowski , CEO at Matter Labs and co-creator of zkSync, to catch up on Matter Labs’s latest developments in extending Ethereum’s capabilities with zk proofs. Alex explains the recent progress in porting Solidity to a zkRollup and how that interacts with the Zinc language and zk proof circuits. They then move on to discussing Ethereum scalability with a deep dive on rollup architecture and the upcoming zkPorter, a solution for sharded zkRollups that’s be...
Apr 07, 2021•55 min
In today’s episode, Anna and James chat with three representatives of the Cosmos ecosystem — Zaki Manian, Tess Rinearson and Shahan Khatchadourian — to learn all about its recent milestone upgrade, Stargate. First up is Zaki Manian , co-founder of Iqlusion and Sommelier Finance, who sets the stage for what Stargate achieved and why the upgrade was the most comprehensive and complex yet for Cosmos. Next is Tess Rinearson , VP of Engineering at Interchain, who recounted her deep involvement in the...
Mar 31, 2021•1 hr 24 min
This week, Anna & Tarun take an in-depth look into AMMs with Guillermo Angeris , a PhD student in Stanford who co-authored a number of papers on fundamental AMM properties. They chat about how his work on Optimization Theory and Inverse Design can be applied to a DeFi context, as well as his most recent paper deals with privacy in AMMs, effectively demonstrating how superficial attempts at making a private AMM are doomed. During the conversation, Anna, Tarun and Guillermo chat about why AMMs...
Mar 24, 2021•1 hr 17 min
