Zero Knowledge Zero Knowledge Podcast

Summary

In this week’s episode Anna and Kobi chat with Muthu Venkitasubramaniam and Carmit Hazay from Ligero. They discuss their work on MPC and ZK for the last 20 years and how the research has evolved. They then dive into a nuanced conversation on how MPC & ZK are interrelated. The discuss Ligero, what led to the project and the early phases, as well as the new Ligetron system and how they plan on getting this technology into the wild.





Here’s some additional links for this episode:



Ligero
Ligero: Lightweight Sublinear Arguments Without a Trusted Setup by Ames, Hazay, Ishai and Venkitasubramaniam
Ligetron by Ligero
Ligetron: Lightweight Scalable End-to-End Zero-Knowledge Proofs. Post-Quantum ZK-SNARKs on a Browser by Wang, Hazay and Venkitasubramaniam

ℓ-Diversity: Privacy Beyond k-Anonymity by Machanavajjhala, Gehrke, Kifer and Venkitasubramaniam
Efficient RSA Key Generation and Threshold Paillier in the Two-Party Setting by Hazay, Mikkelsen, Rabin, Toft and Nicolosi
MeshCal.com
Zero-Knowledge from Secure Multiparty Computation by Ishai, Kushilevitz, Ostrovsky and Sahai
Introduction to MPC-in-the-Head by Carmit Hazay
ZKBoo: Faster Zero-Knowledge for Boolean Circuits by Giacomelli, Madsen and Orlandi
Episode 322: Definitions, Security and Sumcheck in ZK Systems with Justin Thaler
Communication complexity of secure computation by Franklin and Yung





ZK Hack Montreal has been announced for Aug 9 - 11! Apply to join the hackathon here.





Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.


As Aleo is gearing up for their mainnet launch in Q1, this is an invitation to be part of a transformational ZK journey.


Dive deeper and discover more about Aleo at http://aleo.org/





If you like what we do:



Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree
Subscribe to our podcast newsletter
Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm
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Summary

In this week’s episode Anna chats with Tracy Livengood, co-founder of Pluto; an applied cryptography org building developer tools which add verifiable data from web data to an on-chain application, using ZK.


They discuss Tracy’s move from being an engineer in Web2, what prompted his move into the decentralized web and how he eventually found his way into the ZK space. He shares the concept of ‘Web Proofs’, and how Pluto can use some of the TLSNotary stack to bring private web data into on-chain applications as well as a future tool set he hopes to develop with the project.





Here’s some additional links for this episode:



Pluto.xyz
Pluto Telegram Channel
Docs.Pluto.xyz
0xParc
Signal vs. Noise: How LLMs Broke the Internet and How ZK Proofs Are Going to Fix It by Tracy Livengood





Sign up for zkMesh here!





Gevulot is the first decentralized proving layer. With Gevulot, users can generate and verify proofs using any proof system, for any use case.


Gevulot is offering priority access to ZK Podcast listeners, register on gevulot.com and write “Zk Podcast” in the note field of the registration form!





If you like what we do:



Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree
Subscribe to our podcast newsletter
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Summary

This week, Anna and Nico catch up with Antonio Sanso, Researcher at the Ethereum Foundation and Youssef El Housni, Engineer at ConsenSys and builder of Linea.


They discuss Antonio and Youssef’s new work, Families of prime-order endomorphism-equipped embedded curves on pairing-friendly curves and dive into Elliptic Curve cryptography, Bandersnatch and Verkle Tries amongst much more, before dissecting what terms in the title of this paper truly mean. After getting into the weeds of cryptographic technicalities, the group explores where this work could be used and what it would enable.





Here’s some additional links for this episode:




zkSummit: A new optimized elliptic curve for one layer proof composition - Youssef El Housni (EY)
ZK7: Pairings in a SNARK - Youssef El Housni - ConsenSys
ZK Study Club - ZEXE reading pt 1 (of 3)
ZK Study Club - ZEXE reading pt 2 (of 3)
ZK Study Club - ZEXE reading pt 3 (of 3)
Introducing Bandersnatch: a fast elliptic curve built over the BLS12-381 scalar field by Masson and Sanso
Verifiable Delay Functions from Supersingular Isogenies and Pairings by De Feo, Masson, Petit and Sanso
Episode 117: Isogenies with Luca De Feo

Families of prime-order endomorphism-equipped embedded curves on pairing-friendly curves
C∅C∅: A Framework for Building Composable Zero-Knowledge Proofs by Kosba, Zhao, Miller, Qian, Chan, Papamanthou, Pass, Shelat and Shi
Constructing Elliptic Curves with Prescribed Embedding Degrees by Barreto, Lynn and Scott
Welcome/Opening + Invited Talk by Nadia Heninger (PKC 2024)
SafeCurves: choosing safe curves for elliptic-curve cryptography





Check out the latest jobs in ZK at the ZK Podcast Jobs Board.





The next ZK Hack IRL is happening May 17-19 in Kraków, there’s still time to join at zkkrakow.com.





Namada is the shielded asset hub rewarding you to protect the multichain.


Built to give you full control over sharing your personal information, Namada brings data protection to existing assets, applications, and networks. Namada ends the era of transparency by default, enabling shielded transfers and shielded cross-chain actions to protect your data even when interacting with transparent chains.


Learn more and follow Namada mainnet launch at namada.net.





If you like what we do:



Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree
Subscribe to our podcast newsletter
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Summary

This week, Anna and Tarun catch up with Georgios Konstantopoulos, CTO of Paradigm and long-standing friend of the ZK Pod!


First they cover the work Georgios has been doing since he last appeared on the show, covering everything from updates on Foundry to the more recent work on Reth. They then dig into what makes it different, what inspires its design, where it is heading and the eventual end goals of the project. They also chat about the general client node landscape, from the ETH 2.0 research days to present day, before diving into discussing different clients from different teams, how this diversity can protect a chain and how each client can differ.





Here’s some additional links for this episode:



Georgios’ GitHub
Introducing Reth by Paradigm
Reth GitHub
Episode 224: Foundry with Georgios Konstantopoulos
Loom Network
CryptoZombies
Geth: Ethereum
Full BSC Node Guide: How to Run BNB Smart Chain Nodes
GitHub: flashbots:mev-geth
Arbitrum
The Definitive Guide to Sequencing by James Prestwich
Verkle Trees for Statelessness





Check out the latest jobs in ZK at the ZK Podcast Jobs Board.





The next ZK Hack IRL is happening May 17-19 in Kraków, apply to join now at zkkrakow.com.





o1Labs is excited to announce the v1 release of o1js, THE fastest way to build zkApps and
deploy to the Mina blockchain.


After 2 years and 70,000 downloads, o1js v1 is the enterprise-grade
Typescript zkDSL the community has been waiting for.


Are you ready to build the next killer zkApp? Then visit o1js.org and get started today.





Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.


As Aleo is gearing up for their mainnet launch in Q1, this is an invitation to be part of a transformational ZK journey.


Dive deeper and discover more about Aleo at http://aleo.org/





If you like what we do:



Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree
Subscribe to our podcast newsletter
Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm
Join us on Telegram
Catch us on YouTube

In this week’s episode, Anna and Guillermo catch up with Justin Thaler, Associate Professor at Georgetown and Research Partner at a16z.


The group dive into a handful of points from Justin’s ‘17 Misconceptions about SNARKs’ article, discussing if his views have changed since it was published back in 2023 and whether some points have become common knowledge since the article first rippled through the ZK community. They then dive into his new zkVM Jolt, which was initially described along with Lasso in 2023, but has now been implemented and is open to contributions from the community.




Here’s some additional links for this episode:



17 misconceptions about SNARKs (and why they hold us back) by Justin Thaler
ZK Hack Discord: contains Study Club, Thaler Book Club and more
Approaching the 'lookup singularity': Introducing Lasso and Jolt
Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing
zkStudyClub - Lasso/Jolt (Justin Thaler, Georgetown University/a16z)
Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies Book
Episode 103: Exploring VDFs with Joseph Bonneau
Proofs, Arguments, and Zero-Knowledge by Justin Thaler
Episode 261: Proofs, Arguments, and ZKPs with Justin Thaler
The MoonMath Manual by Least Authority
ZK Hack Whiteboard Sessions
Unlocking the lookup singularity with Lasso by Setty, Thaler and Wahby
Jolt: SNARKs for Virtual Machines via Lookups by Arun, Setty and Thaler
Justin Thaler a16z Articles
Episode 293: Exploring Security of ZK Systems with Nethermind’s Michał & Albert
Fiat-Shamir Security of FRI and Related SNARKs by Block, Garreta, Katz, Thaler, Tiwari and Zając
Fiat-Shamir Transformation of Multi-Round Interactive Proofs by Attema, Fehr and Klooß
Caulk: Lookup Arguments in Sublinear Time by Zapico, Buterin, Khovratovich, Maller, Nitulescu and Simkin
Spartan: Efficient and general-purpose zkSNARKs without trusted setup by Srinath Setty
Stwo Prover: The next-gen of STARK scaling is here




The next ZK Hack IRL is happening May 17-19 in Kraków, apply to join now at zkkrakow.com




Launching soon, Namada is a proof-of-stake L1 blockchain focused on multichain, asset-agnostic privacy, via a unified shielded set. Namada is natively interoperable with fast-finality chains via IBC, and with Ethereum using a trust-minimised bridge.

Follow Namada on Twitter @namada for more information and join the community on Discord discord.gg/namada.




Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.

Dive deeper and discover more about Aleo at http://aleo.org/




If you like what we do:



Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree
Subscribe to our podcast newsletter
Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm
Join us on Telegram
Catch us on YouTube

In this week’s episode, Anna and Kobi chat with Gal Arnon, Ph.D student from the Weizmann Institute of Science & Giacomo Fenzi, Ph.D. student in the COMPSEC Lab at EPFL.


Gal and Giacomo are amongst the co-authors of ‘STIR: Reed–Solomon Proximity Testing with Fewer Queries’ and in this conversation, they discuss how their research led them to work on these topics and where the thesis for this particular work sparked from. They set the stage by exploring the history of FRI and discussing some hidden nuances in how FRI works. And then they introduce STIR, a system that can be used in place of FRI, which incorporates various optimisations to improve the performance.




Here’s some additional links for this episode:



FRIDA: Data Availability Sampling from FRI by Hall-Andersen, Simkin and Wagner
Lattice-Based Polynomial Commitments: Towards Asymptotic and Concrete Efficiency by Fenzi, Moghaddas and Nguyen
DEEP-FRI: Sampling Outside the Box Improves Soundness by Ben-Sasson, Goldberg, Kopparty and Saraf
Proximity Gaps for Reed–Solomon Codes by Ben-Sasson, Carmon, Ishai, Kopparty and Saraf
IOPs with Inverse Polynomial Soundness Error by Arnon, Chiesa and Yogev
Episode 293: Exploring Security of ZK Systems with Nethermind’s Michał & Albert
Circle STARKs by Haböck, Levit and Papini
Episode 304: Exploring FRI, LogUp and using M31 for STARKs with Ulrich Haböck
FRI-Binius: Improved Polynomial Commitments for Binary Towers




The next ZK Hack IRL is happening May 17-19 in Kraków, apply to join now at zkkrakow.com




Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.

Dive deeper and discover more about Aleo at http://aleo.org/




If you like what we do:



Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree
Subscribe to our podcast newsletter
Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm
Join us on Telegram
Catch us on YouTube