Zero Knowledge

Episode Archive

Episode Archive

112 episodes of Zero Knowledge since the first episode, which aired on October 4th, 2017.

  • Episode 97: MimbleWimble pt 1: Grin with Daniel Lehnberg

    October 2nd, 2019  |  1 hr 1 min
    blockchain, grin protocol, mimblewimble, privacy, privacy tech, tech talks, zero knowledge

    In this week’s episode, we chat with Daniel Lehnberg about Grin - an implementation of the MimbleWimble privacy protocol. We cover the story behind MimbleWimble, how Grin first came to be, and how this technology works. We also look back at how this protocol came to be as well as were Daniel sees it going.

  • Episode 96: Eli Ben-Sasson on the latest from StarkWare and the origin of mathematical ideas

    September 25th, 2019  |  55 mins 56 secs
    cryptography, mathematics, snarks, starks, starkware, zero knowledge, zero knowledge research

    This week, Anna speaks with with Eli Ben-Sasson about the latest at StarkWare Industries, the Cambrian explosion of new research within the zero knowledge space and the origin of new mathematical ideas.

  • Episode 95: zkVM with Oleg Andreev

    September 18th, 2019  |  51 mins 1 sec
    blockchain, bulletproofs, privacy, scaling, stellar, virtual machine, zero knowledge proof, zkvm

    In this episode, we chat with the Oleg Andreev, a protocol architect from Stellar, about zkVM- the zero-knowledge virtual machine. We touch on the general concepts of VMs as well as compare zkVM with some other zero knowledge protocols like ZCash and ZEXE.

  • Episode 94: Gnosis & Full Node with Friederike Ernst

    September 11th, 2019  |  57 mins 38 secs
    blockchain, crypto, daos, dutchx, dxdao, exchanges, full node, gnosis, prediction markets, web3

    In this episode, Anna chats with Friederike Ernst from Gnosis about their work on prediction markets, wallet security, exchanges, and the co-working space Full Node in Berlin - a hub for the blockchain community that Friederike spearheaded.

  • Episode 93: Light clients & ZKPs with Celo

    September 4th, 2019  |  50 mins 13 secs
    blockchain, celo protocol, light clients, mobile-first, tech education, zk light client

    In this episode, we chat with the Marek Olszewski & Kobi Gurkan from Celo about their proof-of-stake protocol, their work on making a mobile-ready light client, how zero knowledge proofs can help to make a light client “lighter”, why this would be desirable and what potential such a construction could unlock.

  • Episode 92: Jorge Izquierdo talks Aragon and DAOs

    August 28th, 2019  |  55 mins 20 secs
    aragon one, blockchain, blockchain organisation, daos, decentralised autonomous organisations, legal decentralisation

    In this episode, Anna catches up with Jorge Izquierdo from Aragon One to talk about the beginning of the Aragon project, the history of DAOs, as well as the challenges and potential in these new organisational entities.

  • Episode 91: Near Protocol's focus on UX

    August 21st, 2019  |  59 mins 58 secs
    blockchain development, blockchain ux, ethereum, near protocol, polkadot

    In this episode, we sit down with Alexander Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin from Near Protocol to find out about their work. We discuss what brought them to develop Near Protocol, how they used their whiteboard sessions to learn from the best people in the space, the challenge of blockchain UX, and what has motivated them to become one of the fastest moving projects around.

  • Episode 90: MPC systems with Nigel Smart

    August 14th, 2019  |  57 mins 25 secs
    blockchain, cryptography, cryptology, mpc systems, multi-party computation, nigel smart

    In this week's episode, we chat with Nigel Smart, Professor of Cryptology at KU Leuven and the co-founder of Unbound Tech, about his background in cryptology, the history of MPC systems, MPC systems in the real world, and how MPC stacks up versus other related cryptography and privacy techniques.

  • Episode 89: Eth2.0 update and a look at Libra with Raul Jordan

    August 7th, 2019  |  57 mins 51 secs
    blockchain, blockchain development, eth2, libra protocol, prysmatic labs, test net, validators

    In this week’s episode, we invite Raul Jordan from Prysmatic Labs back to the show. He shares an update about Prysmatic Labs and ETH2.0 development. We cover some of the latest innovations, some existing challenges, timelines, implementation challenges and more. He also shares some insights from his technical review of Facebook's proposed Libra protocol.

  • Episode 88: Accumulators with Ben Fisch

    July 31st, 2019  |  1 hr 1 min
    ben fisch, blockchain, dan boneh, merkle trees, privacy, rsa accumulator, scaling, starks, zero knowledge

    In this week’s episode, we chat with Ben Fisch, Stanford PhD student working in Dan Boneh's applied cryptography group. In our conversation, we dig into accumulators, Merkle trees & vector commitments.
    We also learn a bit about the RSA Accumulator Paper - entitled "Batching Techniques for Accumulators with Applications to IOPs and Stateless Blockchains" - that he co-authored with Benedikt Bünz and touch on some of the ways these can be used.

  • Episode 87: The road to DEXs with Will Harborne

    July 24th, 2019  |  58 mins 32 secs
    centralised exchanges, crypto, decentralised exchange, dexs, ethfinex, trading

    In this week's episode, we chat with Will Harborne, co-founder of Ethfinex and previously at Bitfinex, about the path from traditional exchanges, to centralised crypto exchanges and more recently DEXs. We explore what the role of the DEXs really is and what we could imagine seeing in the future of the space.

  • Episode 86: Ariel Gabizon on his work with zkSNARKs and the beauty of math

    July 17th, 2019  |  51 mins 42 secs
    blockchain, cryptography, filecoin, stark, zcash, zcash bug, zero knowledge proofs, zksnark

    In this week’s episode, we welcome Ariel Gabizon, previously an Electric Coin Company (Zcash) engineer and cryptographer working on zero knowledge constructions. Ariel has worked closely with many of the exciting projects and researchers pushing the boundaries on zero knowledge research. He is also the person who discovered the Zcash bug (along with Sean Bowe and Zooko). In this episode, we explore his journey into the space, what inspires him, and what exciting new paradigms he is exploring today!

  • Episode 85: Zexe: Decentralized Private Computation with Pratyush Mishra

    July 10th, 2019  |  46 mins 14 secs
    blockchain, cryptography, privacy protocol, privacy token, private transactions, zcash, zcon, zexe

    In this episode, we sit down with Pratyush Mishra, CS PhD Student at UC Berkeley and one of the co-authors on the Zexe project, to discuss the Zexe protocol. We cover how this paper came to be, what it aims to solve, how it works, how it could be used and dive into some of the differences between Zexe and some other existing zero knowledge protocol proposals.

  • Episode 84: Zcash community & more with Amber Baldet

    July 3rd, 2019  |  43 mins 18 secs
    amber baldet, blockchain, clovyr, privacy, security, zcash, zcash foundation

    In this episode, we chat with Amber Baldet, CEO and co-founder of Clovyr and board member of the Zcash Foundation, about her road to the blockchain space, the problems she aims to solve with her work on Clovyr, some updates about the Zcash community & foundation, the state of zero knowledge research and the potential and challenges around the implementation of zero knowledge systems in the real world.

  • Episode 83: From Warp Sync to SPREE with Polkadot's Rob Habermeier

    June 26th, 2019  |  1 hr 8 mins
    cryptography, engineering, ethereum, lightclients, parity technology, polkadot, warp sync

    In this episode, Anna chats with Robert Habermeier, one of the co-founders of Polkadot and an engineer at Parity, about his early experience with Rust and cryptography, as well as the work he did at Parity on Warp Sync and Lightclients, how this helped inspire some of the development of the Polkadot architecture and some of the exciting technical concepts that he has discovered along the way.

  • Episode 82: TEEs, SGX and the Graphene project

    June 19th, 2019  |  54 mins 29 secs
    blockchain, confidentiality, privacy, tee

    In this week's episode we chat with the guys behind the Graphene project, Chia-Che Tsai of Texas A&M University and Golem developer Lukasz Glen, about Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel SGX), and the way the Graphene project aims to make it easier for devs to interact with these hardware enclaves.