Theory to Code: Building the Breakthrough zkVM Jolt

with @SuccinctJT @samrags_ @moodlezoup @rhhackett

Welcome to web3 with a16z, a show about building the next era of the internet by the team at a16z crypto. That includes me, host Robert Hackett.  Today's all new episode covers a very important and now fast developing area of technology that can help scale blockchains, but that also has many uses beyond blockchains as well.

That category of technology is verifiable computing, and specifically, SNARKs.  So today we dig into zkVMs, or "zero knowledge virtual machines," which use SNARKs, and we discuss a new design for them that the guests on this episode helped develop — work that resulted in Jolt, the most performant, easy-for-developers-to-use zkVM to date.

The conversation that follows covers the history and evolution of the field, the surprising similarities between SNARK design and computer chip architecture,  the tensions between general purpose versus application specific programming, and the challenges of turning abstract research theory into concrete engineering practice.

Our guests include Justin Thaler, research partner at a16z crypto and associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University, who came up with the insights underpinning Jolt, along with collaborators from Microsoft Research, Carnegie Mellon, and New York Universities.  His is the first voice you'll hear after mine,  followed by Sam Ragsdale, investment engineer at a16z crypto, and Michael Zhu, research engineer at a16Z crypto, both of whom brought Jolt from concept  to code.

Resources for references in this episode:

• "Jolt: SNARKs for Virtual Machines via Lookups" by Arasu Arun, Srinath Setty & Justin Thaler  (Cryptology ePrint Archive, 2023)
• the Jolt Github page
• Michael Zhu and Sam Ragsdale’s post on the open source implementation
• Justin Thaler’s post on the ideas behind Jolt
• an FAQ untangling this new SNARK design paradigm
• our Lasso + Jolt archives
• ▶️📹 Jolt, zkVMs, and speeding up blockchains by Justin Thaler — a quick (five minute) explanation of what Jolt is and why it's important
• ▶️📹 Correcting some SNARK misconceptions by Justin Thaler — a deeper dive into some of the common misconceptions behind Lasso (the theoretical foundation of Jolt) and how this new paradigm works
• "Zero Knowledge Canon, Part 1 & 2" by Elena Burger et al. (a16z crypto, September 2022)
• Computational Complexity: A Modern Approach by Sanjeev Arora and Boaz Barak (Princeton University, January 2007)

As a reminder, none of the following should be taken as tax, business, legal, or investment advice. See a16zcrypto.com/disclosures for more important information, including a link to a list of our investments.