Zero Knowledge

In this week's episode, Anna sits down with Sunny Aggarwal to talk about his journey into blockchain, the beginnings of Blockchain at Berkeley, how he discovered Cosmos, his role as a validator and as a podcast co-host. We discuss:Coursera course that Sunny mentions https://www.coursera.org/learn/money-bankingBlockchain at Berkeley https://blockchain.berkeley.edu/Cosmos https://cosmos.network/Sikka https://www.sikka.tech/Epicenter Podcast https://epicenter.tv/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: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this week, we sit down with Kevin Owocki, co-founder of gitcoin, to have a look at how open source blockchain development is funded. We cover the different methods for funding open source work, what has worked in the past, what hasn’t, how funding blockchain projects can be quite different and what people are experimenting with today. We discuss: EIP1337 Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital InfrastructureA handy guide to financial support for open sourceFunding through foundationsGrants programsCrowdfundingToken paymentsFounder rewards/block rewardsThank 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 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 week’s episode, we welcome special guest Sean Bowe. Sean is an engineer at the Electric Coin Company and the author of the Sprout and Sapling Zcash trusted set ups and much of the underlying cryptography of the protocol. We had a chance to chat about his history, what got him into the topic, some of the joys & challenges to working with SNARKs, and what ideas are inspiring him. We also covered the story of Zcash and the Powers of Tau trusted set up, MPCs, the story of the bug, SONICs, ZEXE, the BLS12-381 Elliptic Curve ConstructionEarly on in the episode, we mention the Radiolab episode about the zcash trusted setup: https://archive.org/details/radiolab_podcast17crypto_zcash_ceremonyQuestions from the audience: https://twitter.com/AnnaRRose/status/1122818062061797376We also mention some of our previous ZK centric episodes that can be found here: https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/zkseries Special thanks to this week's sponsor: Trail of Bits Trail of Bits is offering a service for young technology companies who could use expert security support, but aren't quite at a stage to hire their own team. The service includes staffing a #security channel to answer questions, review high risk PRs, and integrate the latest in continuous testing into your build pipeline. Visit www.trailofbits.com for help securing your product.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: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this week’s episode, we sit down with Zac Williamson of the Aztec Protocol to discuss zero knowledge tools, range proofs, the Aztec Protocol, the different approaches to bringing privacy to ethereum, and how standards in the space are emerging. Check out Zac's talk at the ZK Summit for more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIg2aJQqNNc&feature=youtu.beHere was our episode with Benedikt Bunz talking about Bulletproofs As well as Zokrates and Matter LabsThanks again to this week's sponsor Neufund. If you’re interested in how Neufund's open-source technical environment is enabling tokenization of real-world assets or the QA position, check their GitHub profile at github.com/neufund or the Neufund job offers at neufund.org/careersIf 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 week's episode, we sit down with Justin Drake, researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, to discuss randomness in blockchain, how it can be created and what adversarial models exist. We also discuss the random beacon and how that concept has evolved in the development of ETH2.0Our initial definition of randomness in cryptography comes largely from this article by cloudflare: https://blog.cloudflare.com/randomness-101-lavarand-in-production/Check out Justin Drake's DevCon 4 talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqL_cMlPjOI with the slides https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VKBMcEMaY6PQjDJK4yAFtxn0vD41eYXW05YA3vdTBsI/edit.Explore vdfresearch.org for more on the topic of VDFIf 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 week's episode, we invite J. Ayo Akinyele to the podcast. Ayo is a co-Founder of Bolt Labs which will be focused on developing the Bolt Protocol, a privacy preserving layer 2 approach for anonymous micropayments, which is similar to Lightning Network. Bolt, which stands for Blind, Offchain, Lightweight, Transactions, could be used for both scaling zcash or providing a scalable privacy solution for other chains.Here are some additional resources: Original Bolt Paper by Matthew Green and Ian Meiers: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/701.pdf Bolt description the Electric Coin Company's blog: https://z.cash/blog/bolt-private-payment-channels/Ayo was on the podcast before in our Zcon0 episode: https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/32 (he features around the 17 minute mark) Here is some additional information about the Lightning Network and the projects Casa Nodes and Bitrefill which are mentioned in the episode. Special thanks to this week's sponsor: Trail of Bits Trail of Bits is offering a service for young technology companies who could use expert security support, but aren't quite at a stage to hire their own team. The service includes staffing a #security channel to answer questions, review high risk PRs, and integrate the latest in continuous testing into your build pipeline. Visit www.trailofbits.com for help securing your product.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: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this week's episode, we sit down with the Alex Vlasov and Alex Gluchowski from Matter Labs to discuss their approach to using zkSNARKs for scaling the transaction processing capacity of Ethereum. We chat about the inspiration for the Roll-up project, the Matter Labs implementation, their proposed Franklin network and more. To learn about the project check out: https://matter-labs.io/ and their githubIf you want to find out more about the Roll-up project mentioned, it can be found here: https://github.com/barryWhiteHat/roll_upIf 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 week's episode, we speak with Julian Arni about Radicle, a decentralized alternative to Github built on IPFS. Radicle is both a programming language and a set of tools to enable decentralised open source software development. We go deep into this project, it's hope to impact open source development and also touch on the societal questions that inspired it. Here is a short tweet that summarizes it well. The project can be found on twitter and website 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

In this interview, we chat with Rune Christensen from MakerDAO about stablecoins, MakerDAO’s take on this concept, the peg and how this is maintained, security, oracles and more. Here are a few of the terms that we discuss in the episode: DAI: a crypto asset-backed token pegged to the USD — it is designed to maintain a stable value.MKR: Valuebearing, tradeable token. As a governance token, MKR holders have the responsibility of making risk based decisions that will influence the future health of the system.CDP: The MakerDAO Collateralized Debt Position (CDP) is a smart contract which runs on the Ethereum blockchain. It is a core component of the Dai Stablecoin System whose purpose is to create Dai in exchange for collateral which it then holds in escrow until the borrowed Dai is returned.The best resource we found to explain the CDP is here: https://medium.com/cryptolinks/maker-for-dummies-a-plain-english-explanation-of-the-dai-stablecoin-e4481d79b90Thanks again to this week's sponsor Neufund. If you’re interested in how Neufund's open-source technical environment is enabling tokenization of real-world assets or the VP of Engineering position, check their GitHub profile at github.com/neufund or the Neufund job offer at neufund.org/careersIf 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

In this week's episode, we sit down with Sam Williams of Arweave to chat about their novel approach to decentralised storage. We discuss incentivising data storage, the concept of the permaweb, and how to properly decentralise the internet archives. 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

In this week's special episode, Anna pops over to EthCC - the Ethereum Community Conference - to find out what's on people's minds. Speaking with Boris Mann, Maria Paula Fernandez, Hudson Jameson, Sunny Aggarwal, Yalda Mousavinia, and Peter Mauric, these conversations centre around decision making in the decentralised space, the role of transparency, the different organisations and groups that have formed in Ethereum to help make decisions, how compensation can play a role, the code of conduct, the importance of signaling and much more. Here are some of the groups or initiatives or talks mentioned in the podcast:Fellowship of the Ethereum MagiciansEthereum Cat HerdersRick Dudley's talk at EthCCTennagraph Signaling SiteEthereum Community’s Code of ConductCosmos Protocol blogAutarkAragonDecredIf you are looking for some further context for this episode, you may want to check out some previous episodes about governance related topics: Hudson Jameson talks EIPs and Ethereum core decision-makingVlad and Gav go head-to-head on blockchain governancePath to an ERC StandardSpecial thanks to this week's sponsor: Trail of Bits Trail of Bits is looking for companies writing Ethereum smart contracts that could use their security help! If you would like to test out their continuous assurance system, fill out the signup form on crytic.ioIf 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

In this week's episode, we sit down with Martin Lundfall from Dapphub & MakerDAO to discuss formal verification - a topic request that comes directly from the Zero Knowledge audience. We cover what formal verification is, where it makes sense, where it doesn't, the k-framework, how different this approach is to the "move fast and break things" approach, and much more. Here are some of articles and videos we mention: Is a type a lifebuoy or a lamp?https://github.com/dapphub/klabhttps://github.com/kframework/evm-semanticshttps://github.com/kframework/khttps://jellopaper.org/https://dapphub.chat/Thanks to Web3Foundation for being our sponsor on this week's episode. For more about the Web3Foundation grants, check out their blog: https://medium.com/web3foundation/introducing-web3-foundation-grants-442f6753926a and grants.web3.foundation 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

In this week's episode, Anna and Fredrik chat with Danny Ryan from the Ethereum Foundation about the ETH2.0 project. We cover how ETH2.0 came to be, how it works, the new roadmap, and where the project is headed. Useful resources:Our last episode on ETH2.0 with Prysmatic LabsETH2.0 SpecsEthresearch ForumBarry Whitehat's Rollup ProjectCosmos' Game of StakesOur event, the Zero Knowledge Summit is happening on March 22 - if you are a dev, researcher or founder working on these topics and want to attend, please submit your application here: https://goo.gl/forms/e0DpeHO6kyPVMlIg2If 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

In this week’s episode, we sit down with Igor Barinov from POA Network and Austin Griffith from Gitcoin Labs to discuss bridges, xDai - the new side-chain where DAI is the native token - and Austin's super simple Burner Wallet.Bridges are a wide topic and with this conversation we try to give some insight into what they are and how they work. We look at xDai as one concrete example of such a bridged side-chain and Austin talks about his burner wallet that can provide a super snappy nice UX thanks to running on this faster side-chain.A few resources to check out: Burner Wallet website and Github RepoxDai WebsiteAs mentioned in the intro, the Zero Knowledge Summit is happening on March 22 - if you are a dev, researcher or founder working on these topics and want to attend, please submit your application here: https://goo.gl/forms/e0DpeHO6kyPVMlIg2)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

In this week’s episode, Anna sits down with Jenna Zenk, the CTO of Melonport, to discuss her background, the path to the melon protocol, the challenges of building sophisticated smart contracts and what it means to release a decentralised protocol into the wild. This was recorded soon after the M1 conference in Zug. A few resources to check out: Melonomics Blog postsThe Melon Governance explainedTechCrunch writes about Melon's technical council Thanks again to this week's sponsor Neufund. If you’re interested in how Neufund has linked legal documents with smart contracts, check their GitHub profile at github.com/neufund or join Neufund on their Telegram channel.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

In this episode, we sit down with Bogdan Opanchuk and John "Tux" Pacific from NuCypher to chat about their threshold proxy-encryption technology, how the project aims to provide privacy infrastructure, dig into their nuFHE scheme and explore far along FHE research, the cryptographic "holy grail", really is.Here are some papers we mention in the podcast: Matt Green’s blog post “Wonk post: Circular security“BBS98A FULLY HOMOMORPHIC ENCRYPTION SCHEME - Gentry 2009 https://crypto.stanford.edu/craig/craig-thesis.pdfIf you are interested in applying for the Zero Knowledge Summit, you can do so here: https://goo.gl/forms/QDuvwivUOzAH5P6h1Just keep in mind, the event has limited spots and we are expecting a highly technical audience. 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

In this episode, we discuss tokens, token standards and the sometimes confusing ERC process. We cover some of the most popular token standards and discuss what it takes to design a standard and get this accepted by the community. We also have a chat with Matt Lockyer about his experience submitting ERC998 To see the full list of ERCs in draft and final state, check out https://eips.ethereum.org/ercCatch up with Matt Lockyer on Twitter or Medium Thank you to our sponsor Least Authority. If you would be interested in using P4 - the Private Periodic Payment Protocol - for subscription payments with your token or blockchain GDPR-compliant, reach out to Least Authority [email protected]. A more detailed specification can be found here —> P4 paper 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

In this episode, we chat with Tarun Chitra about a broad range on topics, from his work on early non-blockchain ASICs, to making models in high frequency trading, and the nuances of statistical modeling of PoS systems in blockchain.Tarun's new company Gauntlet is building a simulation platform for crypto networks to help developers understand how decisions about security, governance and consensus mechanisms are likely to affect network activity and asset value.Here are a few of the articles that we discuss: On Bitcoin and Red BalloonsSecure High-Transaction Rate Processing in BitcoinWe also mention a previous episode with Axel Ericsson from Vest that you can find here --> https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/49For a bit more about Tarun, follow him on Twitter, or check out this Vice Article about his past work at D.E. Shaw Research creating simulation models of glass molecules. Special thanks to this week's sponsor: Trail of Bits. If you want to find out more about JP Smith's extreme security challenge we mentioned at the beginning of this episode, you can find his write-up on the Trail of Bits blog here --> What do La Croix, octonions, and Second Life have in common? If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on Telegram - https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjASupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz

In this week's episode, Anna and Fredrik give a general introduction to MPCs, go over a few examples of MPCs in action, compare them with other cryptographic concepts, try to pronounce "fully homomorphic encryption" properly, and more! Here are some of the material that we reference: Andrew Yao's paper on Protocols for Secure Computations"How to play ANY mental game" publication - MPCs first introduced Goldreich-Micali-Wigderson (GMW)Very basic intro to Shamir Secret Sharing and MPCs Video Series from a Prof at Chalmers First widely used MPC in DenmarkMulti-Party Computation: From Theory to Practice. Nigel P. Smart speaking at Google Rob Habermeier's Shamir Secret Sharing libraryA course by Zvika Brakerski on Fully Homomorphic EncryptionThanks again to this week's sponsor Aragon. To find out more about Aracon, the first Aragon community conference happening on January 29-30th in Berlin visit aracon.oneTo the listeners of Zero Knowledge Podcast, if you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on Telegram - https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjASupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz

In this week's episode, we catch up with Eli Ben-Sasson and Alessandro Chiesa from StarkWare Industries. We talk about their longstanding academic work in theoretic & applied cryptography, how StarkWare came to be, the emergence of zkSNARKs and zkSTARKs, some of the differences between these different zero knowledge systems, dive into the specific features of STARKs (!) and what's coming next in the space. For some background on the topics we cover in this episode, please check out the other episodes in our ZK SeriesHere are a few papers we mentioned in the talk: Zero coin: http://zerocoin.org/media/pdf/ZerocoinOakland.pdfZero cash: http://zerocash-project.org/paperFollow Eli on Twitter: https://twitter.com/elibensasson?lang=enTo find out about our ZK Study Club, join the Zero Knowledge telegram group: https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjASpecial thanks to POA Network for being our sponsor on this episode. To learn more about threshold cryptography and how to use it, check out the latest POA Network Medium post : https://medium.com/poa-network/tagged/hbbftIf you like what we do:Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmSupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz

In this week's episode, we sit down with Jutta Steiner, our friend and Fredrik's CEO at Parity Technologies, to talk about her history in the space, the origin of Parity, the last year in blockchain, and what we see coming in 2019!Here is the cryptography conference Fredrik mentioned: https://cyber.stanford.edu/sbc19If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on Telegram - https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjASupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz

If you like what we do: Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmJoin us on Telegram - https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjASupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8ZzIn this week's episode, Anna and Fredrik dig into the topic of Merkle trees. We discuss the history of the concept, explore different kinds of Merkle trees, and touch on Radix trees & Patricia Merkle tries. We also look a bit at their usage in both Bitcoin and Ethereum.The topic was a challenging one to explain without diagrams or visuals, so below we are sharing some resources we used in preperation for this episode. We will also be posting this on Github, please feel free to push additional links that might be relevant. Wikipedia definition of a Merkle TreeDan Finlay's talkMerkle Trees explainedWikipedia definition of a Radix TreeMerkling in EthereumEthereum Modified Merkle Patricia Trie systemSparse Merkle TreesBlockchain at Berkeley: Merkle trees and Patricia TriesModified Merkle Patricia Trie: How Ethereum saves a stateModified Merkle Patricia Trie SpecificationThe Merry Merkle initiativeLet us know what you think about this episode, we would love to hear from you.

In this episode, Fredrik sits down Martin, who is a Core Dev working on the Geth client and head of security for the Ethereum foundation. They chat about what got him into the space, his interest in security, his entry into blockchain development and, together, they offer some advice for devs wanting to get into this space. Special thanks to POA Network for being our sponsor on this episode. To find out more about their open source Verifiable Delay Function, or VDF, please check them out here: https://github.com/poanetwork/vdfFollow Zero Knowledge on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmSupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz

In this week's episode, Anna interviews a number of participants at the ETHSingapore hackathon as part of the ETHGlobal series and tries to get a sense for how these hackers are approaching the space. In this showcase (which was recorded on the Saturday, right in the middle of the hackathon), we asked: What got you into this space? What's your take on singapore? What are you building? and What do you make of the state of Ethereum? To see our previous ETHGlobal Hackthon podcast - check out the ETHBuenosAires EpThe projects we interviewed:https://devpost.com/software/ethsingaporehttps://devpost.com/software/daico-hedge-grtcouhttps://devpost.com/software/showmewhatyougot-8bni16https://devpost.com/software/ethereumjs-orbitdbhttps://devpost.com/software/hashedgehttps://devpost.com/software/quantstamp-uihttps://devpost.com/software/ethereumjs-orbitdbhttps://devpost.com/software/dai-lyAlso thanks to @Evan_Van_Ness - happy you were finally allowed back on twitter :P Follow ETHGlobal - https://twitter.com/ETHGlobalAnd check out the upcoming events - Denver & CapeTownFollow Zero Knowledge on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmSupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz

In this week's episode, we sit down with Izaak Meckler & Evan Shapiro from O(1) Labs to discuss Coda, a blockchain using recursive composition of zkSNARKs to eliminate history. We discuss recursive zkSNARKs generally, what a recursive zkSNARK construction blockchain would look like, and the challenges in implementing this sophisticated scaling solution.To find out more about the project and some of the resources mentioned in the episode, please have a look at the links below: Coda on Twitter: https://twitter.com/codaprotocol?lang=enCoda on Github: https://github.com/o1-labsScalable Zero Knowledge via Cycles of Elliptic Curves https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/595Incrementally Verifiable Computation or Knowledge Implies Time/Space Efficiency https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4074/97eeb99a9341714e9db05b57f500270139d7.pdfThank you to our sponsor POA Network - for more information about their ERC20 to ERC20 TokenBridge, check out the POA Network repo: github.com/poanetwork/token-bridgeFollow Zero Knowledge on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefmSupport us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge Or directly here: ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1aBTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz

In this episode Fredrik sits down with Péter Szilágyi, lead developer of go-ethereum to talk about his background, what it means to be a Core Dev and some of the struggles of maintaining an open source project.Special thanks to the sponsor of this episode Trail of Bits. If you're interested in hardware wallet security, check out their article 10 Rules for the Secure Use of Cryptocurrency Hardware Wallets.

In this week's episode, we are joined by a couple greats in the space, Gavin Wood and Vlad Zamfir, to debate the merits of on-chain vs off-chain governance. If you want more, catch their governance panel at Web3Summit (which happened right before our interview).Thanks to our sponsor Trail of Bits - find out more about their upcoming event on their blog: https://blog.trailofbits.com/And support Zero Knowledge on Patreon - https://patreon.com/zeroknowledge

In this episode, we sit down with Julian Loss, a researcher at Spacemesh, to explore DAGs, the Proof-of-Spacetime idea and the Spacemesh project. Links:Spacemesh on twitterSoK: A Consensus Taxonomy in the Blockchain EraThanks to our Sponsor POA Network!Check out their blog to find out more about their new blockchain consensus protocol, HoneyBadger BFT

In this special 50th episode, we invite our friend Zooko to the podcast to chat about his background and explore the history of Zerocoin and Zcash. We dig into the inner workings of Zcash, the trusted setup, the sapling upgrade, and what the future of the project might look like!The Sapling upgrade promises to reduce the proving times of the zk-SNARKs from 37 seconds to 2.3 seconds by replacing the SHA256 hash function with an improved performance Pedersen hash function called Bowe-Hopwood Pedersen, introducing an updated eliptic curve (Groth16/BLS12-381), moving from Libsnark to Bellman, and using a new split circuit design. We dig deep on this and into what the UTXO model actually is to help us better understand the changes being introduced with Sapling. Hope you enjoy coming on this journey with us!Links:Zerocoin PaperZerocash PaperSapling details Radio Lab Episode on The CeremonyBalance vs UTXO data modelsZcash Engineer Ariel explaining Zcash at the Zero Knowledge SummitZEXE PaperLove notes on the blockchainHoward Wu on Zero Knowledge

In this Blockchain 101 episode, we sit down with Axel Ericsson of Vest (previously 1Protocol) to talk about Cryptoeconomic Primitives, incentive models, designing smart equilibria, and staking. Links:Game Theory GameVest on TwitterAxel on TwitterVest Website

In this episode, we sit down with Taylor Monahan of MyCrypto, to discuss how the project got started and share some customer support horror stories. We also reflect on the challenge of building UX that works for people while maintaining the spirit of decentralization, and finally, where she sees the space developing. Links:Taylor on TwitterMyCryptoSolidity HoneypotsYou can also find the Slither blog post from this week's sponsor Trail of Bits HERE

In this episode, we sit down with Richard Craib from Numerai to talk about crowdsourcing the role of a quant, how Numerai developed and where it is going, Dapp adoption in Ethereum and what it's like to build a hedge fund fulled by a crypto token. He also shares the new project Erasure - a decentralized data marketplace for financial predictions. Follow Richard on TwitterLearn more about Numerai

We finally sit down with Gavin to go through a bit of what Parity has been working on with Polkadot and Substrate. We talk about Polkadot early history and who was involved and where the idea spawned, up to coding practices and where Substrate became a thing.If you want to know more, links below.Meta-link of Polkadot ResourcesSubstrate In A NutshellVitalik Tweet-storm about Sharding History

In this week's episode, we sit down with Henri Pihkala from Streamr to talk p2p messaging and what it means. We cover topics like pubsub, compare it to whisper, talk about the needs of different messaging systems as well as dig into why one would want to decentralize something like this. Finally we take a look at the data marketplace idea that streamr is trying out and what potential use-cases that could have.

In this episode, we are joined by Tomasz Drwięga, a Core Developer at Parity Technologies, to discuss the lifecycle of a transaction on the Ethereum network and how the mempool works. We will be covering the following topics: What a mempool/transaction queue/transaction pool is.How a transaction reaches a mempool and what the mempool does with it. Looking at what causes the CPU increase and delays in the network. What happens when a transaction gets stuck.Gossip.The security properties of the mempool.What a network attack could look like.Here are some additional links and ressources if you want to dig deeper. https://medium.com/blockchannel/life-cycle-of-an-ethereum-transaction-e5c66bae0f6ehttps://blog.infura.io/when-there-are-too-many-pending-transactions-8ec1a88bc87ehttps://etherscan.io/txsPendinghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossip_protocolhttps://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Ethereum-Wire-Protocol

In this episode, we chat with Hudson Jameson of the Ethereum Foundation about how he got involved in the space, the EIP process, and the challenges of decision making in the decentralised space.In decentralised communities, decision making and information gathering can be a uniquely difficult endeavor. Using some of the ideas from other open source communities as well as some new concepts emerging specifically for decentralised spaces, the Ethereum core devs are developing new tools to make these decisions more effectively. Follow Hudson on Twitter -> @hudsonjamesonHere was the giant Core Dev Call -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CZ1uO_WxVk

In this episode, we sit down with Mitch Kosowski, director of product at ETHPrize and Andrew Cravenho, project leader at POA Network. We cover ETHPrize's inception and activity, the way that pain points in the community are identified, and the open source block explorer project that POA Network is building with an ETHPrize bounty. ETHPrize developed out of a series of interviews with devs in the community. Unlike traditional grants, ETHPrize aims to use bounties, sub-communities and working groups to tackle specific problems emerging in the ecosystem. ETHPrize is funded by 0x, Status, ECF, CoinbaseWallet and Ethereum Foundation and initialised by Robbie Bent and inspired by the findings in the ETHReport Read more about the open source block explorer - https://medium.com/poa-network/introducing-blockscout-the-ethereum-explorer-86b4ddd9e8a4Here are some additional links:ETHPrize websiteMitch's Twitter contact Andrew's Twitter contactPOA Network website

In this episode, we had a chance to speak with Jacob Eberhardt about his work on Zokrates and the Zero Knowledge Proof Toolkit. Zokrates is a programming language & toolbox for zkSNARKS on Ethereum Note: this is a relatively advanced episode as part of our Zero Knowledge Series. For more on the Zokrates project, please explore the following material: Zokrates Github - https://github.com/JacobEberhardt/ZoKratesDevcon Presentation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSlrywb5J_0Berlin Ethereum Meetup slides https://github.com/JacobEberhardt/documents/blob/master/talks/ZoKrates-EthereumMeetupBerlin.pdfzkSNARKs: Driver's Ed. - A practical beginner's guide to creating, proving, and verifying zkSNARKs in your contracts - https://github.com/jstoxrocky/zksnarks_example

In this episode, we speak to Benedikt Bünz, the author of Bulletproofs, about this novel zero knowledge proof system as well as about Verifiable Delay Functions.This is part of our Zero Knowledge Series, where we explore some of the new research in the space of Zero Knowledge research and the emerging concepts. Follow Bulletproof development & Benedikt on twitter Read transcript

In this episode, we speak with Matthew Di Ferrante of the smart contract auditing firm Zero Knowledge Labs about security in the blockchain. Specifically we discuss how he first got interested in security and blockchain technology, some of the cases that have happened in the last few years and how the Ethereum security team responds to a security event. If you want to learn more from Matt you can follow him hereThis week's episode went long, so we are including this link to a bonus piece on governance

In this episode, we sit down with Howard Wu to explore zkSNARKs, the challenges in the application of this awesome technology, the new ideas emerging for how to scale them and his latest work on DIZK.This is the 2nd in our ongoing series about Zero Knowledge technologies. To get a good sense of Zero Knowledge Proofs, please listen to our introduction to the topic in Episode 21. Howard Wu is an early member of Blockchain at Berkeley, the co-author of Libsnark, and a managing partner of Dekrypt Capital. Links:libsnark - https://github.com/scipr-lab/libsnarklibsnark-tutorial - https://github.com/howardwu/libsnark-tutorialDIZK paper - https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/691DIZK library - https://github.com/scipr-lab/dizk Read transcript

In this episode, we sit down with Raul & Preston from Prysmatic Labs to discuss sharding, the evolution of the spec, Ethereum 2.0, what happens to a side chain during a hard fork, and whats coming up for this important scaling solution.Prysmatic Labs is building a sharding solution in Go and the Ethereum 2.0 side chain that is set to combine PoS + Sharding.Links: https://medium.com/prysmatic-labs/how-to-scale-ethereum-sharding-explained-ba2e283b7fce https://medium.com/prysmatic-labs/ethereum-sharding-biweekly-development-update-9-prysmatic-labs-f2b1ad55e825

In this episode, we speak with Eric Tang from Livepeer about the need for off-chain computation, what scenarios make sense for off-chain and which can work on-chain, how Livepeer sees its role in the ecosystem and how they aim to help more people livestream in a decentralised way. Read more about Livepeer here If you want to get involved with the project, you can do so here Check out this paper by Jacob Eberhardt about off-chain computation. http://www.ise.tu-berlin.de/fileadmin/fg308/publications/2017/2017-eberhardt-tai-offchaining-patterns.pdf

In this episode, we sit down with Ethan (Bucky) Buchman, co-founder & CTO of Tendermint, to talk about testnets. We look into what they are, what purpose they serve and cover examples from Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cosmos and Polkadot. LinksTestnets on Karl.techThe latest gossip on BFT consensusBitcoin TestnetRopsten TestnetKovan TestnetRinkeby TestnetJoin the Cosmos testnetJoin the Polkadot testnet

In this episode, we dig into what the term smart contract means with our guest James Prestwich. First introduced in 1994 by Nick Szabo, smart contracts have inspired whole ecosystems of companies and projects to start thinking about blockchain in much bigger terms. We explore what the term 'smart contract' means, where it comes from, some use cases and some of the new challenges that come along with it.Follow James on twitter @_prestwich

In this episode we sit down with Ele and Alexis from OSCoin to talk about what they are building and the general problem of open source incentivization. We dig into the incentivization and governance models they imagine for the Open Source world as well as some technical aspects of the platform they intend to build.Links:OScoinSocial Architecture - Building On-line CommunitiesRoads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital InfrastructureElinor OstromRadical Markets Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just SocietyOpen Source Without Maintainers

In this week's episode, we cover the Zcon0 conference in Montreal. In our interviews with some of the participants, we explore the zcash community, projects actually implementing zero knowledge proofs, and some of the most exciting ideas to be generated at the event! See the talks hereLinks:BoltCoda Dekrypt Capital Antonie HodgePeter Van ValkenburghLiz SteiningerJ Ayo AkinyeleRachel Rose O'leary Awa Sun YinHudson Jameson Benedikt Bünz AgoricStr4d Nicola Greco Zooko

In this introductory episode, we discuss what makes up blocks and block headers. We also cover a bit about state vs history, what exactly makes up a transaction and do a quick intro to a Merkle Tree. For more, please check out these resources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_160oMzblY8https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/268/ethereum-block-architecturehttps://www.coursera.org/lecture/cryptocurrency/bitcoin-blocks-I5uc7https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkletree

In this episode, we speak with Jack du Rose and Aron Fischer from Colony about governance and open organizations. Colony is building an infrastructure based on the Ethereum blockchain that aims to revamp the way projects and organizations collaborate, promising to make HR and project management more open, fair and efficient.We discuss different ways in which the ideas around colony could be used to created shared and open organisations, how reputation is built as well as discuss their thougths around the general ideas of governance and some of the biggest challenges this creates. For more about Colony - have a look at their site or follow them on twitter!

In this episode, Griff Green shares his experience of working through The DAO hack, the white hat hacker group & Giveth.Through his telling of this story, we are given a front row seat to one of the most exciting events in ethereum and general blockchain history. These events also set the stage for a lot of the decisions, attitudes, rifts and relationships that have since taken hold - from the emergence of the white hat hacker group, the currency split, to the attitude towards governance and immutibility and the community's attitude towards the very concept of a DAO. The story leads us to Griff's latest project Giveth, an ethereum-based project that aims to bring back some of the most inspiring ideas from the era of the DAO, and applies them towards charitable giving. To get involved with Giveth check out their Riot ChannelTo hear a bit more about Griff's work check out this videoor follow him on twitter HERE