Zero Knowledge

Latest Episodes:

Statistical modeling of PoS systems with Tarun Chitra Jan 23, 2019

Show notes

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:

We also mention a previous episode with Axel Ericsson from Vest that you can find here --> https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/49

For 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?

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Cryptography 101: Multi-Party Computations Jan 16, 2019

Show notes

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:

Thanks 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.one

To the listeners of Zero Knowledge Podcast, if you like what we do:

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STARKs & StarkWare with Eli and Alessandro Jan 09, 2019

Show notes

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 Series

Here are a few papers we mentioned in the talk:

Zero coin: http://zerocoin.org/media/pdf/ZerocoinOakland.pdf

Zero cash: http://zerocash-project.org/paper

Follow Eli on Twitter: https://twitter.com/elibensasson?lang=en

To find out about our ZK Study Club, join the Zero Knowledge telegram group: https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjA

Special 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/hbbft

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Kicking off 2019 with Jutta Steiner Jan 02, 2019

Show notes

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/sbc19

If you like what we do:

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Merklize this! Merkle Trees & Patricia Tries Dec 26, 2018

Show notes

If you like what we do:

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In 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.

Let us know what you think about this episode, we would love to hear from you.

Get to know a Core Dev: Martin Holst Swende Dec 19, 2018

Show notes

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/vdf

Follow Zero Knowledge on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm

Support us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge

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ETHSingapore in review Dec 12, 2018

Show notes

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 Ep

The projects we interviewed:

https://devpost.com/software/ethsingapore

https://devpost.com/software/daico-hedge-grtcou

https://devpost.com/software/showmewhatyougot-8bni16

https://devpost.com/software/ethereumjs-orbitdb

https://devpost.com/software/hashedge

https://devpost.com/software/quantstamp-ui

https://devpost.com/software/ethereumjs-orbitdb

https://devpost.com/software/dai-ly

Also thanks to @Evan_Van_Ness - happy you were finally allowed back on twitter :P

Follow ETHGlobal - https://twitter.com/ETHGlobal

And check out the upcoming events - Denver & CapeTown

Follow Zero Knowledge on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm

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Digging into recursive zkSNARKs with Coda Dec 05, 2018

Show notes

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=en
Coda on Github: https://github.com/o1-labs
Scalable Zero Knowledge via Cycles of Elliptic Curves https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/595
Incrementally Verifiable Computation or Knowledge Implies Time/Space Efficiency https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4074/97eeb99a9341714e9db05b57f500270139d7.pdf

Thank 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-bridge

Follow Zero Knowledge on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm

Support us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge

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Get to know a Core Dev: Péter Szilágyi Nov 28, 2018

Show notes

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.

Vlad and Gav go head-to-head on blockchain governance Nov 21, 2018

Show notes

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