ZK Podcast: Recent Episodes
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This community is built around the Zero Knowledge Podcast, a weekly show which goes deep into zk and blockchain topics and features interviews with top technical minds building decentralised tech and blockchain networks.
ZK14 happened on May 7th, 2026 in Rome, Italy.
Top thinkers and builders from the zk space came together to discuss the latest in zero knowledge research, zk use-cases, cryptographic primitives, privacy and maths.
This one-day event consisted of a mixture of topic oriented talks & workshops. Find out more here!
The event was brought to you by Zero Knowledge Podcast, a show hosted by Anna Rose which explores zero knowledge systems and the decentralized technology powering Web3 and the community building it.
FIND OUT MORESee all videos of zk14 on our Youtube Channel. For more information, check the zkSummit website and follow @zeroknowledgefm on Twitter.
The post zkSummit14 appeared first on ZK PODCAST.
About Vac
Vac builds public good protocols for the decentralized web. We do applied research based on which we build protocols, libraries and publications.
This role is within the Vac…
The post Zero Knowledge Researcher (Nescience) appeared first on ZK PODCAST.
o1Labs’ vision is to create an internet where developers use programmable cryptography to create more powerful applications. We have successfully incubated the Mina Protocol and are now in…
The post Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) appeared first on ZK PODCAST.
The Zero Knowledge Podcast is seeking a skilled and driven Community & Marketing Manager to play a pivotal role in growing and engaging with our community. This position combines technical…
The post Community / Marketing Manager appeared first on ZK PODCAST.
We are hiring a Strategic Growth Lead—someone ambitious, creative, and ready to hustle. In this role, you’ll drive partnerships, secure sponsorships, explore new revenue streams, and…
The post Strategic Growth Lead appeared first on ZK PODCAST.
*This is a contract to hire role
o1Labs seeks a results-driven Community Manager to work alongside our Head of Marketing to grow and nurture one of the most exciting new communities in…
The post Community & Events Manager appeared first on ZK PODCAST.
Join our team as a ZK Software Engineer specializing in the implementation of Zero-Knowledge circuits within the realm of blockchain. Your role will be researching, designing, analyzing and…
The post Zero-Knowledge Software Engineer appeared first on ZK PODCAST.
The ZK13 venue has more limited spaces than previous years, so if you’d like to join for this edition – get your application in as soon as possible!
This one-day event will consist of a mixture of topic oriented talks & workshops. Apply now!
The event is brought to you by Zero Knowledge Podcast, a show hosted by Anna Rose which explores zero knowledge systems and the decentralized technology powering Web3 and the community building it.
FIND OUT MORESee all videos of previous summits on our Youtube Channel. More information, check the zkSummit website and follow @zeroknowledgefm on Twitter.
The post zkSummit13 appeared first on ZK PODCAST.
About
We’re Payy – and we’re building the future of global consumer banking built on zk and crypto rails. Think Revolut, Venmo or CashApp – but global, fast, private and self custodial. Our…
The post Senior full stack (Rust + React) engineer appeared first on ZK PODCAST.
About the Role
RISC Zero is expanding our marketing team, seeking a Social Media Manager to amplify our voice and nurture our growing audience and community across various social platforms,…
The post Social Media Manager appeared first on ZK PODCAST.
About the Role
We are seeking a world-class Senior Software Engineer to enhance our zero-knowledge proof system and stay at the forefront of cryptographic innovation. This role involves the…
The post Senior Software Engineer, ZK appeared first on ZK PODCAST.
This week, Anna and Nico take a look back at some of the ZK Events produced in 2024 by the ZK Podcast, ZK Hack and other adjacent projects. Starting with the live ZK Jargon Decoder hosted in January and spanning the 10 months since, Anna and Nico share behind-the-scenes anecdotes, highlight key talks from the events and share some insight into how the programs for the zkSummit events are created. They wrapped with a summary of some of the themes in ZK that got them talking this year and are tracking going forward.
Don’t forget, this is the last episode of ZK Podcast before we take a pause in weekly shows for the rest of 2024 - but don’t worry we will be back!
The post Episode 344: ZK Events 2024 Recap appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week Anna chats with Mikerah Quintyne-Collins from HashCloak and Stoffel Labs. They discuss how Mikerah got her start in the crypto space and then dive into the work she did at ChainSafe and eventually at HashCloak. They cover Mikerah’s work on privacy preserving tech like ZK, TEE and MPC and learn about what drives her tweet game and the wisdom she has picked up over the years as a technical founder, driven by curiosity… and memes.
The post Episode 343: Mastering MPC & Memes with Mikerah appeared first on ZK Podcast.
Just sharing 2 updates:
1) The ZK Whiteboard sessions are BACK with a 2nd season! These videos will be released every 2 weeks for the next 3 months.
2) The Zero Knowledge Podcast will take a pause on the weekly cadence of the show starting Oct 16th until the end of 2024.
The post Bonus: ZK Whiteboard Sessions Season 2 and a ZK Pod Pause! appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week Anna catches up with Zac Williamson & Ariel Gabizon from Aztec. They explore what’s new since they were both on the show last spring before diving into the pair’s work over the last year, covering everything from Zac’s contributions to Aztec 3 to Ariel’s latest research on IVC with his publications of the Protostar and Stackproofs works.
The post Episode 342: Catch up with Zac and Ariel appeared first on ZK Podcast.
Zero Knowledge Summit 12 is a one-day event with talks and workshops on SNARKs, STARKs, cryptographic primitives, privacy, maths and more!
The post The Zero Knowledge Summit 12 appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week Anna and Nico chat with Lukas Helminger and Ais Connolly from TACEO. They discuss Lukas & Ais’ early work in cryptography and privacy preserving technologies, the founding of TACEO and their recent work on coSNARKs - or Collaborative SNARKs - that combine MPC and ZK. They explore how these coSNARKs are created, their coCircom language, the characteristics of these systems as well as how they can be applied in the real world.
The post Episode 341: coSNARKs with Ais and Lukas from TACEO appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week Anna and Zaki Manian dive into the Cosmos ecosystem and ask the question: is Cosmos Dead? They explore key events, teams and players who worked on Cosmos during different eras before teasing out the strengths and structural flaws that made the project what it is today. The conversation wraps with a discussion around new initiatives aimed at reviving the ecosystem and aligning factions in Cosmos together towards a central goal.
The post Episode 340: Is Cosmos Dead? A critical look with Zaki Manian appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun catch up with Andrew Miller. They cover his early work on consensus, ZK and MPC before switching focus to the topic of his current work: TEEs. They map his evolving opinion on TEEs and explore why they could be seen as an optimal solution to many of the blockchain challenges.
The post Episode 339: TEEs with Andrew Miller appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week Anna and Nico chat with Arnaud Schenk, one of the original co-founders of Aztec and creator of the Polaris Fellowship. They discuss Arnaud’s recent blog post ‘On Trust Infrastructure’, exploring the down sides of a trustless system, the need to make online community building more possible and how programmable cryptography may play a role in these solutions. They explore the history of computer culture, the rejection of institutions by mid-90s internet culture and how the seeds for this were set by the 60s counterculture.
The post Episode 338: On Trust Infrastructure with Arnaud Schenk appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode Anna and Tarun chat with Naveen Durvasula about his recent work ‘Robust Restaking Networks’. They discuss Naveen’s early work on matching markets and how this led him to work on mechanism design before exploring how the concepts of restaking were first presented, and how both Naveen and Tarun have been working to better model the mechanisms underpinning restaking, to understand how they work and how they can be optimized.
The post Episode 337: Restaking Research with Naveen & Tarun appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna chats with Connor O’Hara from Celestia. After discussing the latest ZK Hack Montréal event where Connor was a judge, they dive into his professional background, the ecosystems he has been a part of and what led him to work on Celestia. They then discuss various ZK-focused initiatives within the Celestia ecosystem.
The post Episode 336: ZK in Celestia with Connor O’Hara appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna chats with Jens Groth and Daniel Marin from Nexus. They catch up on all things Groth16 with the author himself before diving into a variety topics, such as formal verification in the context of ZKPs, the Nexus architecture, the benefits and challenges of building a system from the ground up, folding and IVC plus the properties these offer in a zkVM context and much more.
The post Episode 335: Groth16, IVC and Formal Verification with Nexus appeared first on ZK Podcast.
Hey! There is no episode this week, but wanted to share an update about zkSummit 12 - happening on Oct 8 in Lisbon. If you want to join, be sure to apply to attend. If you want to apply to speak, the deadline to apply is Aug 15th. Both application to attend and the application to speak are in the same form that can be found @ www.zksummit.com
The post Bonus: zkSummit 12 appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and Guille catch up with Joe Bonneau, Assistant Professor at NYU and Research Partner at a16z crypto research. They discuss the research Joe has been working on since he was last on the show in 2019, including Naysayer proofs, Zero-Knowledge Middleboxes, Sealed-Bid Auctions and other ZK-related research projects to date.
The post Episode 334: ZK Research Update with Joe Bonneau appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode Anna chats with Ismael Hishon-Rezaizadeh, Founder and CEO at Lagrange Labs and Charalampos (Babis) Papamanthou, Head of Research at Lagrange and Co-Director of the Applied Cryptography Lab at Yale University.
They revisit the concepts of zk-powered coprocessors and dive into the work that Charalampos did previous to joining Lagrange on Verifiable SQL. They then explore how this is incorporated into the Lagrange coprocessor system, the work they are doing on Reckle Trees, future work and what all this enables for dApp developers. They discuss their new prover marketplace, the general state of infrastructure and how they are keen to bring more concepts from general computing into decentralized blockchain systems.
The post Episode 333: Verifiable SQL, Reckle Trees and ZK Coprocessing with Lagrange Labs appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun sit down with Hart Lambur irl at EthCC week in Brussels. They start by exploring Hart’s project Across - a cross-chain interoperability solution and sister project to Uma. They explore Across’ construction, the tradeoff space and how this compares to other interop solutions. Then, in ZK Podcast tradition, the group shift gears with a few drinks and explore thoughtful observations on the week in Brussels.
The post Episode 332: Catch up in Brussels with Hart from Across appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week's ZK Podcast episode will be delayed to Thursday this week due to Brussels mania. In the meantime, we wanted to highlight the upcoming ZK Hack Montreal event, happening Aug 9-11 2024. This is the 4th IRL zk-focused hackathon produced by ZK Hack. Apply now to attend ZK Hack Montreal as a hacker and jump into zk.
The post Bonus: ZK Hack Montreal appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun meet with Varun Srinivasan, co-founder of Farcaster. They explore the Farcaster project, discussing the ideas that prompted its inception and what separates it from existing social media networks. The conversation explores the design space that Farcaster opens up for devs and the kinds of applications that can be built on top of it.
The post Episode 331: Farcaster with Varun Srinivasan appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and Guille chat with Ying Tong Lai and Bryan Gillespie about their latest research and works to date. They get to dive into Ying Tong’s work on Zcash, Geometry Research and Halo2 before exploring Bryan’s journey into ZK via Zcash and current work at Inversed Tech.
After catching up, they dive into the pair’s recent work ‘SoK: Programmable Privacy in Distributed Systems’, exploring the classifications and frameworks being introduced.
The post Episode 330: Frameworks for Programmable Privacy with Ying Tong and Bryan Gillespie appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode Anna and Nico chat with Alessandro Chiesa, Associate Professor at EPFL and Eylon Yogev, Professor at Bar-Ilan University. They discuss their recent publication; Building Cryptographic Proofs from Hash Functions, which provides a comprehensive and rigorous treatment of cryptographic proofs and goes on to analyze notable constructions of SNARGs based on ideal hash functions.
The post Episode 329: Building Cryptographic Proofs from Hash Functions with Alessandro Chiesa and Eylon Yogev appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun chat with Sims Gautam and Liam Eagen from Alpen Labs. They dive into the world of Bitcoin L2s and focus on how ZK can be used to incorporate strong connections between Bitcoin and new execution environments. The group then explores BitVM, covenants, the distinction between the Bridge Operators and sequencers in this model and how this differs from how these actors work in Eth L2s. They then dive into SNARKnado, including what is happening under the hood, the ways in which this system offers round-based fraud games mixed with ZK and which agent provides DA and more.
The post Episode 328: ZK on Bitcoin with Alpen Labs appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode Anna chats with Shumo and Yi from NEBRA. They discuss NEBRA UPA, their Universal Proof Aggregation product. They cover what it takes to incorporate proving systems into NEBRA UPA as well as the benefits that these systems will bring, how developers are meant to interact with them, and future integrations to enable seamless cross-zkRollup applications. They cover prover marketplaces, verification aggregation systems, and the design space that these systems open up.
The post Episode 327: Proof Aggregation with Shumo and Yi from NEBRA appeared first on ZK Podcast.
There is no episode this week, but wanted to let you know about the upcoming ZK Hack Montreal event, happening Aug 9-11. Apply now to attend as a hacker and jump into zk
https://www.zkmontreal.com/
The post Bonus: ZK Hack Montreal! appeared first on ZK Podcast.
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.
The post Episode 326: MPC & ZK in Ligero and Ligetron appeared first on ZK Podcast.
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.
The post Episode 325: Web Proofs with Tracy from Pluto appeared first on ZK Podcast.
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.
The post Episode 324: Discovering New Elliptic Curves with Antonio Sanso and Youssef El Housni appeared first on ZK Podcast.
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.
The post Episode 323: The Role of Reth with Georgios appeared first on ZK Podcast.
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.
The post Episode 322: Definitions, Security and Sumcheck in ZK Systems with Justin Thaler appeared first on ZK Podcast.
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.
The post Episode 321: STIR with Gal Arnon & Giacomo Fenzi appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna (https://twitter.com/annarrose) and Brendan Farmer (https://twitter.com/_bfarmer) catch up with Ben Fisch (https://twitter.com/benafisch), CEO of Espresso Systems (https://www.espressosys.com/). They explore the inner workings of the current L2 sequencing landscape and then discuss how a shared sequencing marketplace like Espresso works. They touch on how MEV plays a part in the new system, how the role of the sequencer can be separated into subroles, how all these parts will work together in such a system and much more.
The post Episode 320: A Deep Dive into Shared Sequencers with Espresso’s Ben Fisch appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna catches up with Jordi Baylina, OG Ethereum contributor and Polygon zkEVM Technical Lead. They cover what Jordi has been working on since he was last on the show in 2021. Back then, zkEVMs were still just an idea. Now that many of these systems have launched, they have a chance to look at how these fit into the general L2 landscape.
They cover Jordi’s view on engineering decentralized systems and how these are rolled out, and the recent research from Polygon, including their AggLayer proposal. They wrap up on what inspires him to keep contributing in the space.
The post Episode 319: The Past & Present of the L2 Landscape with Jordi Baylina appeared first on ZK Podcast.
A quick announcement for ZK Hack Krakow, happening from May 17-19 2024. Apply to join us https://www.zkkrakow.com/
The post Announcement: ZK Hack Krakow – May 17-19 2024 appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and Nico chat with Chelsea Komlo, Chief Scientist for the Zcash Foundation and member of the Cryptography, Security, and Privacy lab at the University of Waterloo.
They discuss what sparked Chelsea’s interest in cryptography research, starting with her work contributing to Tor, to her move to Zcash and her PhD work on Threshold Signature Schemes. They define some important terms around different signature schemes and discuss possible optimizations that can be used to make these more performant. They then dive into her work on the FROST Threshold Signature Scheme plus some new upcoming work.
The post Episode 318: Threshold Signature Schemes & FROST with Chelsea Komlo appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week, Anna and Tarun chat with Niraj Pant and Anish Agnihotri from Ritual. They kick off by revisiting the AIxCrypto intersection before diving into the Ritual product and its goals around developing open access AI infrastructure. They explore the opportunities that open up when you bring ML to smart contracts.
The post Episode 317: Enhancing On-Chain Intelligence with Ritual appeared first on ZK Podcast.
Quick reminder about our upcoming zkSummit 11 event. Happening in Athens on April 10th, we once again bring together the top researchers and engineers working in zk to share their latest research and new findings.
The post Bonus: zkSummit11 reminder! appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and Nico chat with Alin Tomescu, founding team member and Head of Cryptography at Aptos Labs. They discuss Alin’s journey to Aptos and his work on distributed on-chain randomness as well as the new Aptos Keyless project. They cover the Keyless accounts architecture, how the flow works for the user and some of the subtleties in the approach they have taken.
The post Episode 316: Alin Tomescu on Distributed On-chain Randomness and Keyless Accounts appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week’s episode is a little different from the usual and is split into two parts with Anna and Kobi exploring the history of ZK Hack, its origins and how the event has evolved into what it is today, including current activity in the ZK Hack ecosystem. The second half of the show splits off into Anna and Nico chatting the top 3 hackers from ZK Hack IV Online, which wrapped back in February. Each mini interview catches up with one of the winners and dives into what it was like to hack on the puzzles, which their favourites were and how they can be improved in the future.
The post Episode 315: ZK Hack Ecosystem & Winners of ZK Hack IV appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun catch up with Uma Roy, CEO and cofounder of Succinct. They dive into Succinct’s developments over the last year ranging from the work they did on the ZK bridge infrastructure to the Succinct platform, the Succinct prover network and their most recent release of SP1. They discuss connections between these products, how their development evolved, the competitive landscape, the future for the project and much more.
The post Episode 314: Succinct’s Platform, Prover Network and SP1 appeared first on ZK Podcast.
On this week’s episode, Anna Rose and Tarun Chitra chat with Mallesh Pai, Associate Professor of Economics at Rice University. They explore mechanism design in an economic context and Mallesh’s work around MEV topics - specifically on censorship in an MEV context and within his Special Mechanism Group.
The discussion takes the team back into the topic of MEV, revisiting the proposer builder separation concept and the impact that this may have on the efficiency and censorship resistance of these systems.
The post Episode 291: MEV, Mechanism Design & the Censorship Problem with Mallesh M Pai appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week, Anna and Guillermo chat with David Wong, author of the Real-World Cryptography and a cofounder zksecurity.xyz - a ZK auditing firm. They chat about how he originally got interested in cryptography, his early work as a security consultant, his work on the Facebook crypto project and the Mina project, zksecurity.xyz, auditing techniques and their efficacy in a ZK context, what common bugs are found in ZK code, and much more.
The post Episode 290: Exploring, Teaching and Auditing ZK with David Wong appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week, host Anna Rose chats with Finch, Erwan and Jen from the Penumbra team. They share an update about Penumbra and discuss how this zk-powered project works under the hood. Specifically, how Penumbra harnesses ZK to offer new paradigms for staking, voting and trading.
The post Episode 289: Penumbra Catch Up with Finch, Erwan and Jen appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week, Anna Rose and Kobi Gurkan chat with Or Sattath, Assistant Professor at the Ben-Gurion University in the Computer Science department. They deep dive into Or’s work on Quantum Cryptography. They begin by defining Quantum Computing and Quantum Cryptography, covering what this means for existing cryptography. They also explore how new discoveries in this field can interact with existing Proof-of-work systems and how Quantum computers could affect the game theory of mining in the future.
The post Episode 288: Quantum Cryptography with Or Sattath appeared first on ZK Podcast.
We are taking a pause on the show this week, but do be sure to get your application in for the upcoming Zero Knowledge Summit - zk10. Happening in London on Sept 20 - spots are limited!
The post Bonus: Apply to zk10! appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week, Anna Rose chats with Stefan George from Gnosis. They start with an update on the projects that have spun out of Gnosis - Safe, Zodiac, CoW Swap - as well as older experiments that the team had incubated. They then cover the evolution of Gnosis Chain from its origin as xDai, discuss the new aggregate bridge architecture Hashi and explore Gnosis Pay - an on-chain p2p payments product that fulfills some of the original motivations of Bitcoin. They discuss a range of relevant topics such as intents, prediction markets, account abstraction, ZK Bridges, decentralization and more.
The post Episode 287: Gnosis catch-up with Stefan George appeared first on ZK Podcast.
Join host Anna Rose and guests Uma Roy, Zaki Manian and Tarun Chitra as they recap all things EthCC Paris. This impromptu chat takes a look back at the topics, talks, parties and events of the Paris week and what really caught their attention. Expect some spicy takes, offtopic rambles, inside scoops and more.
The post Episode 286: Paris 2023 Recap with Uma, Zaki and Tarun appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week, host Anna Rose and co-host Tarun Chitra catch up with Chris Goes from Heliax, the team behind Anoma and Namada. They dive into the concept of 'intents', exploring their origin, evolution, and discuss the intent-based systems that exist today. They then chat about the architectures enabled by a generalized intent-based infrastructure, the potential impacts on user experience, and the inherent trade-offs, particularly when zero-knowledge or privacy aspects are added to the mix.
The post Episode 285: Intents with Chris Goes from Anoma appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week Anna Rose chats with Jon Stephens, Computer Science Ph.D. student in the UToPiA group at UT Austin and co-founder of Veridise. Veridise is a blockchain auditing firm that audits smart contracts and ZK systems. They discuss what led Jon to work on system security, what tools are available to test the security of ZK systems and the process of performing formal verification on ZK systems. They also cover general ZK security, why this topic matters and ways we can incentivise ethical disclosures when bugs and vulnerabilities are found.
The post Episode 284: Using Formal Verification on ZK Systems with Jon Stephens appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week, host Anna Rose and co-host Kobi Gurkan chat with Yohei Nakajima, General Partner at Untapped Capital and creator of BabyAGI. They cover a wide variety of topics from the world of AGIs and agents to building no-code software in public. They kick-off with a chat about how Yohei’s interest in NFTs led him down the AI ‘rabbit hole’ and how he started to build out experiments in public that have inspired a new group of AI tools and projects.
They then discuss the possible impacts of some of this AI tech, how ZK may help mediate the challenges it introduces and more.
The post Episode 283: BabyAGI, Agents and Cutting-edge AI with Yohei appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week, host Anna Rose and Nico Mohnblatt chat with Ron Rothblum, Professor of Computer Science at Technion. They explore Ron’s wealth of experience around the theory of cryptography and ZK, tapping into his experience to get into the weeds on multiple topics including error correcting codes, FRI, FFTs, Reed-Solomon encoding, Fiat-Shamir and more.
The post Episode 282: Error Correcting Codes & Information Theory with Ron Rothblum appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, host Anna Rose chats with Chhi'mèd Künzang and François Garillot from Lurk Labs about all things Lurk, Lisp and zk languages.
They discuss the history of the Lurk project, from its beginnings with Protocol Labs (the team that built Filecoin), to its emergence as a Turing-complete programming language for recursive zk-SNARKs.
They discuss Lurk’s relationship with Lisp, what Lisp is, and how developers familiar with that family of languages would be able to interact with Lurk. They then discuss how Lurk compares to other zkDSLs and the new innovations this Lisp-based language brings to the table.
The post Episode 281: Exploring Lurk: a New Language for Recursive zk-SNARKs appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna Rose dives back into accumulation schemes with Benedikt Bünz and Binyi Chen from Espresso Systems. They discuss ProtoStar and how it compares to works such as Nova and HyperNova, as well as explore some definitions for commonly used terms in the accumulation literature.
The post Episode 280: ProtoStar with Benedikt Bünz and Binyi Chen appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this bonus episode, Anna jumps back on the mic for a quick interview with guest Daniel Kang. They describe the Attested Audio Experiment, a joint project they are doing around zkpod.ai which explores how to create attested audio using zkps. In this experiment, they create a proof that some piece of edited audio originates from original audio recorded by Anna, Kobi and Daniel. This proof helps to distinguish this from zkpod.ai generated audio. In the future some iteration of this architecture could be used by content creators to distinguish deepfake audio from the real thing.
The post Bonus: zkpod.ai & Attested Audio Experiment with Daniel Kang appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week, Anna Rose and Kobi Gurkan continue their conversation with a full episode dedicated to their new side project zkpod.ai. They cover the origin of the project and discuss their motivations and concerns around its uses as well as how they could see the project developing and what this could mean for the field of zk. Kobi shares his thoughts on the current tooling available, where this could progress and potential limitations it holds.
The post Episode 279: Intro to zkpod.ai with Anna and Kobi appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, host Anna Rose and Kobi Gurkan check in on the state of ZK today. They discuss recent ZK applications and tooling as well as developments from the last 6 months. They review new use cases such as ZK for off-chain computations and dive into research breakthroughs, trends, security and much more. Finally, they introduce the concept of zkpod.ai which will be covered fully in next week's episode.
The post Episode 278: The State of ZK with Anna and Kobi appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In today’s episode, Anna Rose and Nico Mohnblatt interview Srinath Setty, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and author of notable works such as Spartan, Nova, SuperNova, and HyperNova. This discussion covers Setty's early work and how this led to him working on SNARKs, folding schemes and sumcheck protocols, as well as his views on the future trajectory of the ZK space.
Given the current chatter around Nova-style accumulation schemes, this interview offers a chance to explore the perspective of a key contributor behind these developments.
The post Episode 277: Nova and Beyond with Srinath Setty appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna sits down with Yi Sun, co-founder of Axiom. Yi was recently on the show to discuss ZK ML’s, however this time they take a closer look at the Axiom project and what it means to be a ZK coprocessor for Ethereum. During the interview they also explore what problems Axiom are trying to solve, how ZKPs are used to help bring historic data into smart contracts and what new use cases this architecture can support.
The post Episode 276: Expanding Computation on Ethereum with Axiom appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week's episode, Anna Rose chats with Scroll co-founders Ye Zhang and Sandy Peng, delving into updates about their zkEVM L2, the progress they have made over the past year and what it really means to build in public. They discuss the challenges and rewards of founding a fully remote organization and how the team navigates the ever changing ZK landscape.
The post Episode 275: Building in Public with Sandy & Ye from Scroll appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week, Anna and Ariel Gabizon cover the SNARK trilogy; a history of pairing-based SNARKs in 3 acts. Starting from Jens Groth’s early works on SNARKs, Ariel takes us on a journey through key moments and breakthroughs in SNARKs over the last decade. They also dive into the emerging accumulation research streams on folding schemes and Ariel’s latest work surrounding lookup tables! This is an episode you won’t want to miss.
The post Episode 274: SNARKs: A Trilogy with Ariel Gabizon appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, host Anna Rose sits down with Zac Williamson, the CEO of Aztec. Anna and Zac dive deep into the history of Plonk, one of the most important proving systems to emerge in the last 5 years. Zac explains how the initial ideas came to be, how it was developed with co-author Ariel Gabizon, and how the system has evolved over time, branching out into many different iterations of Plonk, leading up to his recent work on Goblin Plonk.
The conversation also touches on Aztec's cutting-edge technology stack, including their Noir zkDSL and their planned private programmable L2, Aztec 3. Zac shares his insights on the state of ZK applications and folding schemes, and provides a glimpse into the future of the ZK space.
The post Episode 273: History of Plonk, Noir, and the building of Aztec 3 appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week, Anna Rose interviews Avery Ching, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Aptos Labs. They cover Avery’s working history, including his time working on Meta’s Blockchain project, what this experience meant to him and how this led to the creation of Aptos. They discuss Aptos as it stands today, Avery’s experience of building in the current market and the unique qualities of the Aptos project.
The post Episode 272: The Move into Web3 with Aptos’ Avery Ching appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week, Anna chats with ZK Podcast regular Guillermo Angeris, Head of Research at BCC and Nicolas Mohnblatt], Researcher and Cryptographer at Geometry. This was recorded on April 3rd 2023, the day between the ZK Hack Lisbon hackathon and the zkSummit9 event.
The post Episode 271: Between Two ZK Events with Nico and Guillermo appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week Anna Rose chats with Ravital Solomon, founder of Sunscreen. They cover her interest in lattice-based cryptography and how this paved the way for her work on FHE, starting with her time at NuCypher then followed by her startup Sunscreen. They dive into the challenges involved when building with FHE as well as exploring the power in combining ZKP and FHE. They also discuss the early emergence of lattice-based zero knowledge proofs.
The post Episode 270: FHE and ZKPs with Sunscreen’s Ravital Solomon appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week's episode Anna Rose and Tarun Chitra explore the topic of auctions with guests Kshitij Kulkarni, PHD student at Berkeley’s EECS department and Matheus V. X. Ferreira, Postdoctoral Fellow in Computer Science at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
They discuss the history of auctions, both in the real world and in blockchain, and go on to cover more recent blockchain uses, such as MEV and NFT auctions. They review the incentives of both auction holders and the participants as well as how this incentive design can influence the effectiveness of the auctions themselves.
The post Episode 269: Auctions with Kshitij Kulkarni, Matheus V. X. Ferreira and Tarun appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode Anna Rose interviews Mustafa Al-Bassam, co-founder of Celestia. They cover where Celestia as an idea emerged from, how its rollup-centric data availability (DA) network works and what can be expected from their upcoming launch. They also chat about how Celestia aims to empower Sovereign chains - independent rollup chains that use Celestia as the DA and consensus layer - and how this Sovereign chain model compares with the Ethereum rollup architecture.
The post Episode 268: A Rollup-Centric Future & Sovereign Chains with Mustafa Al-Bassam appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this two-part series exploring ZK Hardware, Anna Rose interviews various participants from the ZPrize competition, alongside the creator of ZPrize and co-host of this episode Alex Pruden from Aleo. Throughout these interviews, they dig into the different types of hardware, such as GPUs and FPGAs, that can be used to accelerate ZKP computation. They also discuss the underlying mathematical techniques in ZKPs that can be optimized for and the tricks and strategies that ZPrize competitors used to achieve these optimizations.
The post Episode 267: ZK Hardware Sessions with Zprize Pt. 2 appeared first on ZK Podcast.
A quick update about our upcoming events - ZK Hack Lisbon and zkSummit 9 - happening in Lisbon from March 31 - April 4.
The post Bonus: ZK Hack Lisbon & zkSummit9 Update appeared first on ZK Podcast.
We’re excited to announce The Zero Knowledge Summit 9 application to attend is open now! This one-day invite-only event will […]
The post The Zero Knowledge Summit 9 appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this 2-part series exploring ZK Hardware, Anna Rose interviews various participants from the ZPrize competition, alongside the creator of ZPrize and co-host of this episode Alex Pruden from Aleo. Through these interviews, they dig into the different types of hardware, such as GPUs and FPGAs, that can be used to accelerate ZKP computation. They also discuss the underlying mathematical techniques in ZKPs that can be optimized for and the tricks and strategies that ZPrize competitors used to achieve these optimizations.
The post Episode 266: ZK Hardware Sessions with Zprize Pt. 1 appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week, Anna Rose and Tarun Chitra dive back into the topic of ZK ML with guests Yi Sun, co-founder of Axiom, and Daniel Kang, Assistant Professor of computer science at UIUC. They discuss Yi and Daniel’s previous academic work and what led them to get interested in ZK topics and specifically ZK ML. They then dive into a discussion about 2 recent papers which examine the use of ZK within Machine Learning architectures.
The post Episode 265: Where ZK and ML intersect with Yi Sun and Daniel Kang appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this episode, Anna chats with Hadrien Charlanes from Sismo. They discuss his early experiences in blockchain development and DeFi, and how this led him to build Sismo, a decentralized identity product with privacy preserving properties. They also cover the ZK badge concept: how they're minted and what is happening under the hood as well as interesting emerging use cases using these zk-based on-chain instruments.
The post Episode 264: On-Chain Reputation & Identity Building with Sismo appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week, Anna catches up with Zaki Manian, co-founder of Iqlusion and Sommelier. They embark on a comprehensive recap of the history of Cosmos to-date, covering what has happened since their last interview 2 years ago. They also dive into topics such as the IBC launch, Osmosis, how the ecosystem grew and accelerated up until the Luna crash and how it continues to recover in its next phase. They then chat about Sommelier and how it has evolved, as well as the concepts of emerging asset types, such as real world assets, and how ZKPs for privacy may finally find a product market fit that could build up real market adoption. You won’t want to miss this one!
The post Episode 263: Cosmos, Sommelier and Emerging Assets with Zaki Manian appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week's episode, Anna Rose and Kobi Gurkan chat with Carl and Trent from the Ethereum Foundation, covering many topics such as their work on the KZG Ceremony and how this is different from the previous trusted setups we have covered. The group takes a deep dive into trusted setups, discussing what they are for, how they have been run and how the setup is going so far. They also discuss Proto-Danksharding and EIP-4844 - a novel way to organize data logistics for Ethereum.
The post Episode 262: Ethereum’s KZG Ceremony with Trent & Carl appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week, Anna chats with Justin Thaler, Associate Professor at Georgetown. They cover Justin’s academic history and discuss what led him to working on interactive proofs and SNARKs. They also take a look at several other topics such as the Thaler Book Study Group, his earlier work Spartan, comparing the security of different rollups built with SNARKs and STARKs and more.
The post Episode 261: Proofs, Arguments, and ZKPs with Justin Thaler appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and guest co-hosts Guillermo, Tarun and Kobi share their thoughts about the state of Zero Knowledge tech today and what it might look like going in 2023. The group discusses some exciting ZK experiments and some of the emerging topics such as: ZK ID, ZK Bridges, ZK DeFi, and more.
The post Episode 260: ZK in 2023 with Kobi, Guillermo, and Tarun appeared first on ZK Podcast.
zkSummit 9 is happening in Lisbon on April 4th!
The post Bonus: Apply to zkSummit 9 appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and part-time Zero Knowledge co-hosts Tarun, Guillermo, Josh and Kobi, get together for a casual catch up and have a look back at 2022. They trace Jan to today in both the zk community and the larger ecosystem, discussing the highs and the lows, focusing on the major events which stood out to them.
If you think the team missed anything, let us know by replying to our tweet announcing this episode of the Podcast.
This is the final episode of 2022 and Anna and the Zero Knowledge Podcast team thanks you for your support this year! Happy Holidays and see you in 2023!
The post Episode 259: 2022 End of Year Wrap with Co-Hosts appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this episode, Anna explores the topic of Ultrasound Money with Justin Drake from the Ethereum Foundation. They kick off with updates on his work in VDFs, MEV and censorship resistance, alongside his particular interests in ZK and how the progress VRFs have made can be applied in Ethereum’s POS architecture. They then dive into the original concept of Ultrasound Money and where Justin sees it progressing to in the future, including the current status around issuance.
The post Episode 258: Ultrasound Money & VRFs with Justin Drake appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week, Anna explores the topic of proof of solvency with Kostas Chalkias, co-founder and chief of Cryptography at MystenLabs. They cover Kostas’ background in Cryptography and explore his work on proof of reserves, otherwise known as proof of solvency. They cover Kostas’ background in Cryptography and explore his work on Proof of Reserves, otherwise known as Proof of Solvency. They review past Proof of Solvency models using ZKPs and look at the protocols that major centralized exchanges are currently using. Then they dive into the security vulnerabilities, privacy issues, and general bugs that Kostas and his collaborators have identified in these protocols and their recommendations on how to better build Proof of Solvency systems.
The post Episode 257: Proof of Solvency with Kostas Chalkias appeared first on ZK Podcast.
On this week’s episode, Anna and Kobi Gurkan chat with Dan Boneh, Professor of Computer Science at Stanford and Director of the Stanford Center for Blockchain Research.
They discuss Dan’s more recent work in ZK Tech, both in education and in research, and review innovative use cases both Dan and his students have been working on since our last episode. It was great to have Dan back on the show, and we hope some of these ideas inspire listeners to jump in on the research or to build some products using these concepts.
The post Episode 256: New ZK Use Cases with Dan Boneh appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun speak with Succinct Labs. Guests Uma Roy and John Guibas discuss their interest in ZK, their work with 0xparc and the goals of Succinct Labs, which aims to provide proof of consensus through SNARK-based light clients.
The post Episode 255: Verifying Consensus On-Chain with Succinct appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and Josh Cincinnati chat with Matt Green, a cryptographer and professor at Johns Hopkins University. They explore Matt’s background in security, blockchain and privacy technologies. He shares his thoughts on early ZK blockchain research, the founding of Zcash, growth in the ZK space, how the industry is ready for tangible use-cases and navigating anonymity and regulatory bodies. This episode closes with a review of Matt’s perspective on the Tornado Cash sanctions and what this means for the space.
The post Episode 254: Matt Green on bringing ZK into the wild and the compliance debate appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week's episode, Anna speaks with Awa Sun Yin, co-founder of Anoma & Namada. They discuss her background in crypto analytics, her work on infrastructure and privacy tech, and how the Anoma project came to be.
The post Episode 253: A look into Namada and Anoma with Awa Sun Yin appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun chat with Pramod Viswanath, Professor of Engineering at Princeton and co-founder of Witness Chain. They discuss Pramod’s early work on wireless networks and the introduction of adversarial thinking into his research, his move over to blockchain, how the incentives of blockchain could be used within the wireless industry
The post Episode 252: From Wireless to Blockchains with Pramod Viswanath appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and Guillermo chat with Brian Retford and Jeremy Bruestle from Risc0. They discuss their previous work in cloud infrastructure and how ZK offered unique solutions to long standing scaling problems.
The post Episode 251: Exploring RISC Zero with Brian Retford and Jeremy Bruestle appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and Kobi Gurkan speak with Dmitry Khovratovich, researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, Dusk Network, and ABDK Consulting and JP Aumasson, CSO at Taurus.
The post Episode 250: What’s the Deal with Hash Functions? appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and Martin Köppelmann, Co-Founder of Gnosis discuss the OFAC sanctions against Tornado Cash and the impact this has had on builders in the community.
The post Episode 249: Impact of Tornado Cash: a Builders Perspective appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna revisits the topic of FHE with Rand Hindi, CEO at Zama. They cover the FHE landscape, what specific use cases it is ideal for, where the technology is at and how FHE differs from MPC and ZK. They explore some of the nuances of the different types of approaches to FHE to achieve this cryptographic environment where one can do computation in a truly private manner.
The post Episode 248: Revisiting FHE with Rand Hindi from Zama appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and Guillermo catch up with Henry de Valence from Penumbra. They discuss his thoughts on requirements for adoption of privacy systems and how these led to him to develop Penumbra. They explore how Penumbra aims to use privacy features not as ‘nice to haves' within the system, but rather as essential components that offer a new paradigm for how to think about DeFi in a Multichain Ecosystem.
The post Episode 247: Exploring Penumbra with Henry de Valence appeared first on ZK Podcast.
This week, Anna and Tarun chat with Florian Tramèr, Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich. They discuss his earlier work on side channel attacks on privacy blockchains, as well as his academic focus on Machine Learning (ML) and adversarial research. They define some key ML terms, tease out some of the nuances of ML training and models, chat zkML and other privacy environments where ML can be trained, and look at why the security around ML will be important as these models become increasingly used in production.
The post Episode 246: Adversarial Machine Learning Research with Florian Tramèr appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this episode, Anna explores the topic of the recent OFAC sanctions against Tornado Cash with 2 interviews: One with TuongVy Le, Head of Regulatory and Policy at Bain Capital Crypto, who previously worked at the SEC and the other with Michael Mosier, General Council at Espresso Systems, who used to work at the Treasury within FinCen and at OFAC itself.
The post Episode 245: Sanctions against Tornado Cash: a Legal Perspective appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this episode, Anna and Guillermo chat with David Tse about his career and research spanning from early Networking, Mobile Networking, P2P, all the way up to his work on formalizing Blockchain systems.
Along the way, they touch on topics like David’s paper 'The Price of Anarchy', the Prism work, his work with the Ethereum Foundation and his new project Babylon.
The post Episode 244: Journey to Blockchain with David Tse appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week's episode, Anna and Tarun revisit the topic of MEV with Chris Hager from Flashbots & Alex Stokes from the EF. In this episode, they tease out more of the nuances around MEV, what the MEV space could look like after the Merge, the PBS (Proposer Builder Separation) concept, what each role in the MEV landscape will do and the MEV-Boost architecture. They also chat about using cryptographic solutions to prevent some kinds of MEV and some recent work that Tarun released on the topic of MEV, as well as future ideas around MEV aim to democratize or even share the searchers rewards.
The post Episode 243: Dive Back into MEV with Alex Stokes and Chris Hager appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna explores Halo 2 with Daira Hopwood and Str4d, cryptographic engineers at Electric Coin Company. They explored what new ideas Halo introduced and how Halo 2 built on these ideas, adding optimisations such as adding Plonk-ish arithmetization to take what was a breakthrough to a production ready proving system.
The post Episode 242: Halo 2 with Daira Hopwood and Str4d appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna chats with Vaibhav Chellani, a bridge builder and the co-founder of Socket. They explore what makes up the components of a bridge, the types of bridges, and then look at their framework for analysing the security trade-offs of different bridge architectures. This is an important topic, since at present, there are more and more bridges coming online to connect all the different chains together. And with these come a number of new bugs, hacks and exploits. This episode gives us an overview on how to think about bridges.
The post Episode 241: Deconstructing Bridges with Vaibhav Chellani appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna and Kobi chat with Shumo Chu, co-founder of Manta Network.They discuss the origin story of the project and how they aim to bring privacy to web3. They explore how the unique accessibility that Polkadot parachain enables, the work they do on building ZK tooling and libraries for the general ZK community. They then take a look at their plans for a multi-asset shielded pool and the future they have planned for Manta projects and more.
The post Episode 240: Composable Privacy with Manta Network appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna catches up with Zaki from Sommelier and Dean from Agoric. They check-in with the latest project news, recap about the UST collapse, and look into IST - Inter Stable Token - a project by the Agoric team that aims to become the Cosmos native multi collateral stablecoin.
The post Episode 239: IST and Designing Stablecoins in Cosmos appeared first on ZK Podcast.
No full episode this week. Just a quick message to let you know about the upcoming zkSummit 8 - happening in Berlin Sept 15 2022.
The post Bonus: Apply to zkSummit 8 appeared first on ZK Podcast.
In this week’s episode, Anna talks with Illia from Near and Alex from Aurora about the work they did that lead them to the Near ecosystem and what the connection is between the Aurora project and Near. They also cover what’s new at Near since the last time Illia and Anna spoke, Aurora+, the Rainbow Bridge, and future plans with Near’s sharding system.
The post Episode 238: Aurora and Near with Alex and Illia appeared first on ZK Podcast.