Zero Knowledge

Dan Boneh, a professor and researcher in applied cryptography and computer security at Stanford, discusses the past, present, and future of cryptography. They delve into topics such as the evolution of cryptography, the integration of blockchain, the balance between transparency and privacy, the preo system, linear probabilistically checkable proofs, soundness error, preventing supply chain attacks, enhancing security in U2F tokens, multi-linear maps, and BLS signatures.

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 Smart ContractsTarun Chitra on Statistical modeling of PoS systemsLight clients & ZKPs with CeloAriah Klages-Mundt - (In)Stability for the Blockchain: Deleveraging Spirals and Stablecoin AttacksDesigning Smart Contracts With Free WillResearch paper: A model for Bitcoin’s security and the declining block subsidy - Hasu, Prestwich, CurtisOn the Frontiers of Validation with Bison TrailsThank you to this week's sponsor Trail of BitsTrail of Bits shared their review of this year's IACR Crypto Conference on the Trail of Bits blog. They highlighted some of the major themes of the conference, including the importance of getting basic cryptographic primitives right and the ascendance of cryptographic tools for privacy-preserving computation such as Zero-knowledge proofs, secure multiparty computation, and secure messaging systems.For more on their thoughts from the conference and what they see on the horizon in their industry, check out the blog post here: https://blog.trailofbits.com/2019/09/11/crypto-2019-takeaways/Our very own Zero Knowledge Summit is happening on Oct 26th. Spend the day with some of the best researchers and thinkers working on Zero Knowledge topics. Get your application in to attend here: https://forms.gle/ZouC15vhTguZ5azq9If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramSupport our Gitcoin GrantSupport us on the ZKPatreonOr directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

Anna interviews Alexander Zaidelson and Alex Romanov from BEAM, a MimbleWimble based privacy coin. They discuss the differences between Beam and Grin, funding protocol development, the Beam business model, and the future of the protocol. They also explore the challenges of sustaining development, incentivizing contributors, and the mining community in Beam.

Daniel Lehnberg, Expert on Grin and the MimbleWimble privacy protocol, discusses the origins of MimbleWimble, the development of Grin, and how the protocol works. They explore the privacy features, the implementation of Cuckoo Cycle proof of work, and the values and decentralization of the Grin project.

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 competitionSuccinct Arguments in the Quantum Random Oracle ModelMore resources about StarkWare and STARK technologyHenri Pointcaré - Science and HypothesisThe chapter mentioned is "On the Nature of Mathematical Reasoning"As mentioned in the intro, the Zero Knowledge Summit is happening on Oct 26th in San Francisco If you are a dev, researcher or founder working on these topics and want to attend, please submit your application here: https://forms.gle/bZvaywbvCe2dnBkD7Here are some impressions from the last one! If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on Telegram - https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjASupport our Gitcoin Grant - https://gitcoin.co/grants/38/zero-knowledge-podcastSupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz

Guest Oleg Andreev, protocol architect from Stellar, discusses zkVM, a zero-knowledge virtual machine. They touch on the history of Stellar, Chain, and zkVM. They compare zkVM with ZCash and ZEXE. They also discuss the capabilities of TXVM and ZKVM, the concept of ZKVM and its positioning, contrasting Snarks and bulletproofs, and using bulletproofs in transaction verification and scalability in zero-knowledge systems.

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 articleslow.tradeFull Node BerlinThank you to this week's sponsor [Trail of Bits](trailofbits.com)Trail of Bits recently releases their smart contract audit executive summary. They aggregated the work of 23 smart contract audits and found that 78% of high impact, easily exploitable findings are discoverable with automated analysis tools, 50% of all findings will never be found with automated tools, and Unit testing has no impact on securityFor more on this audit, have a look at their latest blog posthttps://blog.trailofbits.com/2019/08/08/246-findings-from-our-smart-contract-audits-an-executive-summary/If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramSupport our Gitcoin GrantSupport us on the ZKPatreonOr directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

Marek Olszewski and Kobi Gurkan from Celo discuss their proof-of-stake protocol and work on a mobile-ready light client. They explore how zero knowledge proofs can make a light client "lighter" and the potential of such a construction. They also discuss managing ETH off-chain, reducing data and trust for light clients in Ethereum, universal setups, zero knowledge proofs for interoperability, and the implementation of the ZEXIE code base.

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 DAOThe 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 systems and blockchainIf you are interested in finding out more, check out welcome.apograf.io or this link to a curated list of cryptocurrency course materials: https://apograf.io/c/cryptocurrency_classIf you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on Telegram - https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjASupport our Gitcoin Grant - https://gitcoin.co/grants/38/zero-knowledge-podcastSupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

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=PL9tzQn_TEuFWweVbfTbaedFdwVrvaYPq4Thank you to this week's sponsor [Trail of Bits](trailofbits.com)Trail of Bits recently releases their smart contract audit executive summary. They aggregated the work of 23 smart contract audits and found that 78% of high impact, easily exploitable findings are discoverable with automated analysis tools, 50% of all findings will never be found with automated tools, and Unit testing has no impact on securityFor more on this audit, have a look at their latest blog posthttps://blog.trailofbits.com/2019/08/08/246-findings-from-our-smart-contract-audits-an-executive-summary/If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on TelegramSupport our Gitcoin GrantSupport us on the ZKPatreonOr directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ