Zero Knowledge

Latest Episodes:

Liquid Staking with Lido and Chorus One Dec 08, 2021

Show notes

This week Anna and Tarun chat with Vasiliy Shapovalov from [Lido](Lido) and Felix Lutsch of Chorus One about liquid staking on the ETH2 Proof of Stake consensus chain. Vasiliy explains Ethereum’s unique PoS validator setup and how liquid staking behaves on this network. They also talk about how liquid staking behaves on other live PoS, the inevitability of liquid staking and how to best design these systems. Lastly, they chat about navigating control and decision making in liquid staking protocols, touching on topics of decentralisation and governance.

Here are some links for the episode:

ZK Focused matching round with Gitcoin!

If you’re working on an open source ZK-focused tech or tools, including learning material or documentation then check out the next Gitcoin Matching beginning December 1st. This will be a ZK-focused side round, funded by the ZK Validator and some great teams in the ZK ecosystem. Read more about how to submit your project here:

https://medium.com/zero-knowledge-validator/funding-zero-knowledge-tech-with-gitcoin-51b861f4e089

Today’s episode is sponsored by Least Authority.

Least Authority is committed to building and supporting the development of technology to preserve your privacy and keep your data secure. They do this by reviewing third-party software for security vulnerabilities and by building their own secure software, with a specific focus on increasing the security of the data and systems.

They have several job opportunities, including a Tech Lead to help design and build a service offering the use of Zero Knowledge Access Passes (ZKAPs), a cryptographic authorization protocol, to other organizations.

Visit LeastAuthority.com to see more details about the job listing, read their findings on projects such as Tezos and Mina, and to learn about their work on Zero Knowledge Proofs and zk-SNARKS.

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Digging into Data Availability with Ismail Khoffi from Celestia Dec 01, 2021

Show notes

This week Anna chats with Ismail Khoffi from Celestia about how and why they’re focusing on building a data availability-first L1 blockchain. Ismail takes us through how data availability can be a problem, primarily with light clients and breaks down the components necessary to understanding the data availability problem such as state changes, the separation of consensus from execution and how Celestia aims to be a pluggable consensus layer.

Here are some links for the episode:

https://medium.com/zero-knowledge-validator/funding-zero-knowledge-tech-with-gitcoin-51b861f4e089

Also, join us at the ZK Hack Party + Jobs Fair, Thursday December 2nd Register Here

Today’s episode is sponsored by Aztec.

Aztec aims to be the privacy layer for Ethereum. They believe that unlocking programmable privacy is the next frontier for blockchains. Aztec is the first zero knowledge rollup built from the ground up for anonymous payments and DeFi transactions.

And catch their ZK Hack workshop HERE

Try our Aztec to send funds privately on zk.money.

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Journey Through the Cosmos Ecosystem with Billy Rennekamp Nov 24, 2021

Show notes

This week, Anna chats with Billy Rennekamp about the Cosmos Hub ecosystem, ICF and some of the latest innovations he is watching. They discuss his early experiments with NFTs that led to the Clovers Network and his move into the Cosmos ecosystem. Through this, they cover how the space has evolved and the game changing potential of the IBC paradigm. Billy explains how the Cosmos Hub aims to support innovative modular development and shares the latest research into Interchain security, bridges, governance and much more.

Here are some links for the episode:

Learn ->> ZK Hack - learn - now until December 7th, attend ZK workshops & solve ZK puzzles

Build ->> ZK Jobs Board - find new opportunities in the ZK space!

Meet ->> ZK Jobs Fair - December 2nd, meet top zk projects that are hiring.

Funding for ZK projects ->> Zero Knowledge Gitcoin Matching Round beginning December.

Today’s episode is sponsored by cLabs. cLabs works on building Celo. Celo is a mobile-first platform that makes financial dApps and crypto payments accessible to anyone with a mobile phone.

Its mobile-first approach, SNARK-based light client with full node incentives, and gas payable in ERC-20 tokens allow crypto payments and DeFi tools to reach the 6 billion smartphones on Earth.

Celo’s interoperability and full EVM-compatibility makes it easy to start building dApps that reach global users across devices, carriers, and countries.

If you're interested, come join Celo's vibrant ecosystem. Visit celo.org to learn more.

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Distilling DeFi Primitives with Guillermo, Alex and Tarun Nov 17, 2021

Show notes

This week, Anna catches up with Guillermo Angeris, Alex Evans and Tarun. The conversation charts their research on CFMMs, AMMs and related primitives and explores the goals and methodology of this work. They also revisit the topic of private AMMs and specifically their recent work on using differential privacy to achieve a more private system.

Here are some links for the episode:

Learn ->> ZK Hack - learn - now until December 7th, attend ZK workshops & solve ZK puzzles

Build ->> ZK Jobs Board - find new opportunities in the ZK space!

Meet ->> ZK Jobs Fair - December 2nd, meet top zk projects that are hiring.

Today’s episode is sponsored by Aztec.

Join the thousands of users already sending funds privately on zk.money.

If you like what we do:

Join us on Telegram

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Curating JPEGs with JPG Nov 10, 2021

Show notes

This week, Anna and Tarun chat with MP, Trent and Sam from JPG about this on-chain NFT curation protocol. They walk through what the JPG team wanted out of this decentralized curation protocol and how to bring in voices that aren't always heard in the traditional art world. They also explore the idea of rethinking the mechanism of curation, indexing and permissionless access in order to bring a crypto native approach to NFT art culture. Lastly, they look at JPG's focus on on-chain records can preserve longterm value of NFTs with an eye on how to bridge the various ecosystems in the future and brainstorm around the idea of ZK NFTs.

Here are some links for the episode:

Learn ->> ZK Hack - learn - now until December 7th, attend ZK workshops & solve ZK puzzles

Build ->> ZK Jobs Board - find new opportunities in the ZK space!

Meet ->> ZK Jobs Fair - December 2nd, meet top zk projects that are hiring.

Thank you to this week’s sponsor, Anoma. Anoma is a multivariate & multivariable bartering protocol that enables bartering among N-parties of arbitrary assets, including NFTs, all with zero-knowledge privacy. Check out Awa’s twitter thread to learn more about this project: .

Be sure to stay tuned for Anoma’s first public testnet, in which you’ll be able to play with Anoma’s Proof-of-Stake, intent gossip/matchmaking layer, and custom validity predicates.

Check Anoma’s codebase on GitHub and the team building Anoma is hiring. Find their jobs HERE

If you like what we do:

Join us on Telegram

Catch us on Youtube

Read up on the r/ZKPodcast subreddit

Give us feedback! -https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A

Support our Gitcoin Grant

Support us on the ZKPatreon

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Keeping Up with the Kusama Network Nov 03, 2021

Show notes

This week, Anna catches up on what has been happening in the Kusama network ecosystem with Will Pankiewicz, Raul Romanutti, and Bruno Skvorc. First up, Will, the Master of Validators at Parity, takes us through the fundamentals of Kusama, how it differs from Polkadot and some future predictions for the ecosystem and its parachains. Next, Raul, Community Manager and council member, breaks down how Kusama's governance and council functions. Last but not least, we learn about RMRK founded by Bruno, an NFT project on Kusama which started as a hack to support basic NFTs without smart contracts and grew into full-blown NFT ecosystem on Kusama.

Here are some links for this episode:

ZK Hack kicked off on October 26th and goes until December 7th — a multi-round online event with workshops and puzzle solving competitions. Put together by the Zero Knowledge Podcast and the ZKValidator and supported by all of our fantastic sponsors. Even if you missed the first session you can still join the next ones, head to the website to check out the schedule of workshops and puzzles: https://www.zkhack.dev/

Thank you to this week’s sponsor. Centrifuge - A Real-world DeFi project. Centrifuge puts real-world assets on the blockchain, allowing issuers to get liquidity on their assets and investors to make a safe, stable yield in the volatile crypto world.

They are hiring positions! Head to https://centrifuge.io/careers to learn more.

If you like what we do:

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Support our Gitcoin Grant

Support us on the ZKPatreon

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MPC and DAGs with Aleph Zero’s Adam Gagol & Matthew Niemerg Oct 27, 2021

Show notes

This week, Anna speaks with Adam Gągol and Matthew Niemerg about Aleph Zero - an L1 project mixing ZKPs and MPCs with a DAG consensus algorithm. The aim of their project is to enable private smart contracts. In the conversation, they explore the underlying DAG structure and their privacy solutions that leverage zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs) and Secure Multiparty Computation (sMPC).

Here are some links for this episode:

ZK Hack kicked off on October 26th and goes until December 7th — a multi-round online event with workshops and puzzle solving competitions. Put together by the Zero Knowledge podcast and the ZKValidator and supported by all of our fantastic sponsors. Even if you missed the first session you can still join the next ones, head to the website to check out the schedule of workshops and puzzles: https://www.zkhack.dev/

Thank you to this week’s sponsor DeversiFi!

DeversiFi's mission is to make the opportunities of DeFi available to everyone and their platform enables this with an impressive user experience and simple to use interface. Built with some of the cutting edge StarkWare scaling tech you've heard about on the podcast, this is a great way to start using zk tech live today. Right now on the platform you can invest, trade and send tokens and manage your portfolio all without paying gas fees.

Find out more about how you can make to most of DeFi at https://www.deversifi.com/.

If you like what we do:

Subscribe to our podcast newsletter to not miss any event!

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Support our Gitcoin Grant

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Stateless Ethereum & Verkle Tries with Dankrad Feist Oct 20, 2021

Show notes

This week, Anna speaks with Dankrad Feist, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. They talk about the future of the ETH client infrastructure, the merge, the difference between merkle trees and verkle tries, and more. They also explore how concepts that originated in the ZK research space have made their way into the ETH client stack.

Here are some links for this episode:

Look out for ZK Hack kicking off October 26th — a multi-round online event with workshops and puzzle solving competitions. Put together by this podcast and the ZKValidator and supported by all of our fantastic sponsors. Think Hackathon meets CTF meets Dark Forest round based competition. There will be a leaderboard and prizes. And deep dive learning sessions with the best teams in the space. Signup & Join the discord!

Thank you to this week’s sponsor Aleo! Aleo a new public Layer-1 blockchain tailor-made for building private applications.

Check out the website, or roll up your sleeves and visit leo-lang.org to start building.

Aleo also invites the community to participate in an ongoing setup ceremony for trustlessly generating the system parameters at setup.aleo.org.

If you like what we do:

Subscribe to our podcast newsletter to not miss any event!

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Support our Gitcoin Grant

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DeFi’s Multichain Future with Zaki Manian from Sommelier Oct 13, 2021

Show notes

This week, Anna catches up with Zaki Manian and his new project Sommelier. They explore how Sommelier aims to develop strategies to better serve the more complex emerging DeFi projects like Uniswap V3, and how this would allow the average user to benefit from these new powerful tools. They also discuss Zaki’s vision for multichain DeFi and how the space has evolved over the last few years.

Here are a few links for this episode:

Be sure to stay tuned for Anoma’s first public testnet, in which you’ll be able to play with Anoma’s Proof-of-Stake, intent gossip/matchmaking layer, and custom validity predicates.

Check Anoma’s codebase on GitHub and the team building Anoma is hiring. Find their jobs on the ZK Jobs Board

*If you like what we do: *

Subscribe to our podcast newsletter to not miss any event!

Join us on Telegram

Catch us on Youtube

Read up on the r/ZKPodcast subreddit

Give us feedback! -https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A

Support our Gitcoin Grant

Support us on the ZKPatreon

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Read transcript

SNARK Research & Pedagogy with Alessandro Chiesa Oct 06, 2021

Show notes

200th Episode of Zero Knowledge Podcast! This week, Anna chats with Alessandro Chiesa, a professor working on cryptography, complexity and security and one of the co-founders Zcash and StarkWare. Anna and Ale dig into some of the recent SNARK research coming out of his lab and discuss how to navigate the challenges of teaching in a space that changes quickly.

Here are some links for this episode:

Look out for ZK Hack kicking off October 26th — a multi-round online event with workshops and puzzle solving competitions. Sign up at: https://www.zkhack.dev/

If you're in Lisbon in October for Lisbon Blockchain Week then join us for the official ZK Hack Kick-off Party!

They are hiring positions! Head to https://centrifuge.io/careers to learn more.

If you like what we do:

Subscribe to our podcast newsletter to not miss any event!

Join us on Telegram

Catch us on Youtube

Read up on the r/ZKPodcast subreddit

Give us feedback! -https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A

Support our Gitcoin Grant

Support us on the ZKPatreon

Donate through coinbase.commerce

Read transcript