Zero Knowledge

Latest Episodes:

Exploring Spacemesh with Julian Loss Nov 14, 2018

Show notes

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:

Thanks to our Sponsor POA Network!

Check out their blog to find out more about their new blockchain consensus protocol, HoneyBadger BFT

Zooko talks Zcash on our 50th episode Nov 07, 2018

Show notes

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:

Blockchain 101: Cryptoeconomic Primitives and Staking Oct 31, 2018

Show notes

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:

Talking UX with Taylor Monahan of MyCrypto Oct 23, 2018

Show notes

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:

You can also find the Slither blog post from this week's sponsor Trail of Bits HERE

Chat with Richard Craib from Numerai Oct 17, 2018

Show notes

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 Twitter

Learn more about Numerai

Gavin Wood on Polkadot, Sharding and Substrate Oct 10, 2018

Show notes

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.

P2P messaging with Henri from Streamr Oct 03, 2018

Show notes

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.

Blockchain 101: Transaction lifecycle & the mempool Sep 26, 2018

Show notes

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.

Hudson Jameson talks EIPs and Ethereum core decision-making Sep 19, 2018

Show notes

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 -> @hudsonjameson

Here was the giant Core Dev Call -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CZ1uO_WxVk

ETHPrize & Open Source Block Explorers Sep 12, 2018

Show notes

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-86b4ddd9e8a4

Here are some additional links: