Zero Knowledge

Episode Archive

Episode Archive

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

  • Episode 116: zkSync and Redshift: Matter Labs update

    February 12th, 2020  |  56 mins 26 secs
    blockchain, ethereum, matter labs, redshift, sidechain, zero knowledge proofs, zkrollup, zksnarks, zksync

    In this week's episode of the podcast, we catch up with Alex Glukowski of Matter Labs to hear about zkSync, the latest iteration of their zkRollup implementation built to be a scaling and privacy engine for Ethereum. We also touch on the Redshift protocol, a new transparent zkSNARK system that emerged as a result of their work on this system.

  • Episode 115: Cosmos, IBC and ZKPs with Chris Goes

    February 5th, 2020  |  1 hr 2 mins
    cosmos network, cryptography, ibc, interoperability, zero knowledge proofs, zkproofs

    In this week’s episode, we catch up with Christopher Goes, IBC Lead at Tendermint. We learn a bit more about the Cosmos Network ecosystem and his work on IBC. We then focus in on how he is thinking about zero knowledge in the context of IBC like-interoperability constructions. We explore some of the ways in which zkps could be incorporated into different schemes for interoperability - including bridging, lightclient constructions, validity proofs and more.

  • Episode 114: Exploring the Fractal transparent SNARK construction

    January 29th, 2020  |  50 mins 51 secs
    cryptography, fractal protocol, math, recursive snarks, uc berkeley, zero knowledge, zksnarks

    This week, we explore the Fractal transparent SNARK construction with its authors Dev Ojha and Nick Spooner - both students of Alessandro Chiesa at UC Berkeley. In this episode, We explore how Fractal works, how it improves on some of the earlier work on Sonic and Marlin, how it borrows from but differentiates itself from STARKs, as well as what they discovered while working on this paper about recursive SNARKs and what makes that property possible.

  • Episode 113: Latest recursive SNARKitecture with Izaak Meckler from O(1)Labs

    January 22nd, 2020  |  51 mins 49 secs
    blockchain, coda protocol, cryptography, privacy, recursive snarks, snark, zero knowledge proof, zksnarks

    In this week’s episode, we catch up with Izaak Meckler from 0(1) Labs to talk about launching a recursive snark based incentivised test net, updates on the working SNARKitecture, a recap of recursive SNARKs and a look at what's next for the project.

  • Episode 112: Dive into Plonk!

    January 15th, 2020  |  55 mins 29 secs
    aztec protocol, cryptography, lagrange-bases, plonk, polynomial commitments, zero knowledge

    In this week’s episode, we learn more about Plonk with Ariel Gabizon and Zac Williamson from Aztec. PLONK is an efficient, universal SNARK construction. We explore what distinguishes Plonk from some other other new constructions including their focus on Lagrange-bases to deconstruct complex problem statements into simple polynomial identities.

  • Episode 111: Mixers with Tornado.cash

    January 8th, 2020  |  1 hr 1 min
    blockchain, cryptocurrency, ethereum, mixer, privacy, technology

    In this week’s episode, we chat with the Roman Storm and Roman Semanov from Tornado.cash all about mixers. We explore what they are used for and how they work, how Zero Knowledge can be incorporated to provide more privacy, what the challenges are and what the future holds for the Tornado.Cash project.

  • Episode 110: So long 2019! What's next?

    January 1st, 2020  |  48 mins 30 secs
    2020, blockchain, cryptography, privacy technology, year in review, zero knowledge proofs

    In this end of year episode, we chat about what we've learned in 2019, some of our favourite episodes, this year's explosion in ZK research and what we are looking forward to in 2020!

  • Episode 109: Exploring use-cases for zkps and zk standards with QEDIT

    December 25th, 2019  |  1 hr 5 mins
    blockchain, privacy software, qedit, standardisation, tech talk, zero knowledge research, zkproofs

    In this week’s episode, Anna sits down with Daniel Benarroch and Aviv Zohar from QEDIT - a privacy software startup focused on bringing Zero Knowledge to enterprise customers. We chat about the goals of the company, some of the emerging use cases and the zkproof standardisation efforts.

  • Episode 108: Catch up with Zaki Manian from Tendermint

    December 18th, 2019  |  55 mins 39 secs
    blockchain, blockchain tech, cosmos, pos, proof-of-stake, silicon valley, tendermint, validator

    This week we catch up with Zaki Manian, Director at Tendermint and co-founder of the Iqlusion Validator. We chat about the blockchain scene in Silicon Valley, SF's love of DeFi, the challenge of balancing pragmatism and regulation with the decentralised ideology, the nuances of working on a live PoS system, the wins of 2019 and what is on the horizon!

  • Episode 107: Centrifuge and zkSNARKs in action with Lucas Vogelsang

    December 11th, 2019  |  1 hr 1 min
    blockchain financing, circom, decentralisation, defi, financial services, fintech, privacy, zksnarks, zokrates

    In this week’s episode, we catch-up our friend Lucas Vogelsang from Centrifuge. Centrifuge is an open, decentralised platform to connect the global financial supply chain. We chat about the journey Lucas took to co-founding this company, how privacy plays a role in his thinking and we discover what it means to be a project building with zkSNARKs today.

  • Episode 106: IPFS, Libp2p & Filecoin with Juan Benet

    December 4th, 2019  |  1 hr 10 mins
    blockchain, decentralised storage, filecoin, incentive design, ipfs, networking, protocol developement, protocol labs

    In this week's episode, we chat with Juan Benet, founder of Protocol Labs, about IPFS, Libp2p, and the much anticipated incentivised decentralised storage protocol Filecoin. We dig into the history of the Filecoin project, the gap in the “market” they are trying to fill, the challenges they have found in the development of the Filecoin protocol and the latest tech they are exploring.

  • Episode 105: Alan Szepieniec on Hash Functions & Supersonic SNARKs

    November 27th, 2019  |  48 mins 33 secs
    cryptography, hash functions, ku leuven, marvellous universe, snarks, starkware, supersonics, zksnark

    In this week’s episode, we catchup with Alan Szepieniec, a researchers at Nervos and co-author of the Supersonics paper & the Marvellous family of Hash Functions (which specify the Vision/Rescue cyphers). We chat about his past work in cryptography, how the Supersonics paper came to be, and dive into the new generation of hash functions emerging, including the Marvelous universe.

  • Episode 104: Exploring Kusama, the Canary Chaos Network

    November 20th, 2019  |  57 mins 41 secs
    blockchain governance, canary network, decentralised network, kusama, polkadot, testnet

    In this week’s episode, Anna chats with Fredrik and Nicole Zhu, Developer at Parity Technologies, about the experimental Polkadot Canary Network they call Kusama. We cover how Kusama was developed, the goals of this format and what launching a Chaos Canary Network is all about.

  • Episode 103: Exploring VDFs with Joseph Bonneau

    November 13th, 2019  |  1 hr 6 mins
    blockchain, blockchain vdf, cryptography, math education, randomness, security, vdfs, verifiable delay function

    In this week’s episode, we sit down with Joseph Bonneau, Assistant Professor at NYU and co-author on the Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs) paper. We discuss VDFs, what they are, how they were developed and what they can be used for.

  • Episode 102: Mapping the Web3 stack with The Graph

    November 6th, 2019  |  53 mins 56 secs
    blockchain, decentralization, engineering chat, tech stack, the graph, web3

    In this week’s episode, we chat with Brandon Ramirez, Research Lead and co-founder of The Graph, about the problem his project is trying to solve, the fast evolving Layer 1/Layer 2 paradigm, the emerging group of Service Protocols, and how these projects interact with other elements of the Web3 stack.

  • Episode 101: TEEs with Yan Michalevsky from Anjuna

    October 30th, 2019  |  51 mins 15 secs
    intel's sgx, mpcs, sgx, tees, tooling, trusted execution environment, zero knowledge proofs, zkps

    In this week’s episode, we chat with ​Yan Michalevsky, CTO & Co-founder, Anjuna Security about their work with TEEs, a continuation of a topic we covered in episode 82 of this podcast. In this episode, we go deeper and cover Intel SGX vs AMD memory, the risk profiles, tooling for TEEs, applications of enclaves and how these techniques are being optimized for.