Episode 100: Dan Boneh on the past, present & future of cryptography

In this, our special 100th episode of the Zero Knowledge Podcast, we caught up with Dan Boneh, professor and researcher in applied cryptography and computer security at Stanford. In this far-reaching conversation, we talk about Dan's background in the field of cryptography, how the field has evolved over the years, his work on cryptography & blockchain education, where zero knowledge research and SNARKs in particular fits into the field, some exciting new research coming out of the Applied Cryptography Group at Stanford, what cryptographic and engineering problems he thinks we should be focused on solving, and more.

This episode covered a lot of ground and even though we went overtime, there is still so much more to talk about. We hope to have Dan back on the show sometime soon!

In the meantime, here are some resources that might help you explore some of the topics covered:


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Previous Episodes

Episode 317: Enhancing On-Chain Intelligence with Ritual

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.

Bonus: zkSummit11 reminder!

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.

Episode 316: Alin Tomescu on Distributed On-chain Randomness and Keyless Accounts

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.

Episode 315: ZK Hack Ecosystem & Winners of ZK Hack IV

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.

Episode 314: Succinct’s Platform, Prover Network and SP1

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.

Episode 313: Revisiting Hardware with Ingonyama

In this week’s episode, Anna chats with Omer Shlomovits and Yuval Domb from Ingonyama. They go back to the start of the project, exploring Ingonyama’s initial vision for what ZK Hardware could be, how the field has evolved and how they are accelerating ZK Hardware today. The group discuss hardware product cycles, the hardware and algorithmic components, how a ZK ASIC is developed, they review some of the latest research from Ingonyama and more.

Episode 312: ZKP2P with Brian & Richard

In this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun interview Brian Weickmann & Richard Liang from the ZKP2P project. They cover the opportunities and challenges of building ZK applications with the current tools available, as well as revisit the topic of ZK Email and explore how this lies at the heart of the current version of ZKP2P. They also discuss the goals of ZKP2P, what’s happening under the hood, the types of experiments and initiatives the project is running, how a user can already use the existing product and the opportunities systems like ZKP2P open up.

Episode 311: The Launch of Celestia and Beyond

In this week’s episode, Anna and Guillermo chat with Yaz Khoury and Ismail Khoffi from Celestia. They share how the team prepared for the launch of the Celestia mainnet and what has been happening at Celestia since. They revisit the topic of DA (Data Availability) and explore how rollups and dApp developers can already use the Celestia DA layer. The group discusses Blobstream, which brings the benefits of Celestia to Ethereum and helps to scale the network, as well as community building, the modular thesis and much more.

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