On this week’s episode, Anna Rose and Tarun Chitra chat with Mallesh Pai, Associate Professor of Economics at Rice University. They explore mechanism design in an economic context and Mallesh’s work around MEV topics - specifically on censorship in an MEV context and within his Special Mechanism Group. 

The discussion takes the team back into the topic of MEV, revisiting the proposer builder separation concept and the impact that this may have on the efficiency and censorship resistance of these systems. 



Here’s some additional links for this episode:


Episode 183: CowSwap & DAO Tech with Gnosis’s Martin Köppelmann 
Episode 216: A Dip into the Mempool & MEV with Project Blanc 
Episode 243: Dive Back into MEV with Alex Stokes and Chris Hager
Episode 249: Impact of Tornado Cash: a Builders Perspective
Episode 269: Auctions with Kshitij Kulkarni, Matheus V. X. Ferreira and Tarun
Vitalik’s Blog Post
Special Mechanism Group’s Thread on Censoring Eth
Block relating to Thread
Special Mechanism Group’s Research Papers (with explainers)




zkSummit 10 is happening in London on September 20, 2023! Apply to attend now -> zkSummit 10 Application Form. 



Bonsai, RISC Zero’s most anticipated product, allows developers to prove huge programs off-chain, roll them into one succinct proof, and verify anywhere with low amounts of gas.

Visit https://r0.link/ZKpodcast to learn more and sign up today for the Bonsai waitlist.   



Anoma’s first fractal instance, Namada, is launching soon!

The MASP circuit's latest update enables shielded set rewards directly in the shielded set, a novel feature that funds privacy as a public good.

Follow Namada on twitter @namada for more information and join the community on Discord discord.gg/namada.   



If you like what we do:


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Episode 291: MEV, Mechanism Design & the Censorship Problem with Mallesh M Pai

Zero Knowledge is a podcast which goes deep into the tech that will power the emerging decentralised web and the community building this. Covering the latest in zero knowledge research and applications, the open web as well as future technologies and paradigms that promise to change the way we interact — and transact — with one another online.
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In this week’s episode, Anna and Guillermo catch up with Justin Thaler, Associate Professor at Georgetown and Research Partner at a16z. 

The group dive into a handful of points from Justin’s ‘17 Misconceptions about SNARKs’ article, discussing if his views have changed since it was published back in 2023 and whether some points have become common knowledge since the article first rippled through the ZK community. They then dive into his new zkVM Jolt, which was initially described along with Lasso in 2023, but has now been implemented and is open to contributions from the community. 



Here’s some additional links for this episode:


17 misconceptions about SNARKs (and why they hold us back) by Justin Thaler 
ZK Hack Discord: contains Study Club, Thaler Book Club and more 
Approaching the 'lookup singularity': Introducing Lasso and Jolt 
Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing 
zkStudyClub - Lasso/Jolt (Justin Thaler, Georgetown University/a16z)
Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies Book 
Episode 103: Exploring VDFs with Joseph Bonneau 
Proofs, Arguments, and Zero-Knowledge by Justin Thaler 
Episode 261: Proofs, Arguments, and ZKPs with Justin Thaler 
The MoonMath Manual by Least Authority 
ZK Hack Whiteboard Sessions 
Unlocking the lookup singularity with Lasso by Setty, Thaler and Wahby
Jolt: SNARKs for Virtual Machines via Lookups by Arun, Setty and Thaler 
Justin Thaler a16z Articles 
Episode 293: Exploring Security of ZK Systems with Nethermind’s Michał & Albert
Fiat-Shamir Security of FRI and Related SNARKs by Block, Garreta, Katz, Thaler, Tiwari and Zając 
Fiat-Shamir Transformation of Multi-Round Interactive Proofs by Attema, Fehr and Klooß 
Caulk: Lookup Arguments in Sublinear Time by  Zapico, Buterin, Khovratovich, Maller, Nitulescu and Simkin 
Spartan: Efficient and general-purpose zkSNARKs without trusted setup by Srinath Setty 
Stwo Prover: The next-gen of STARK scaling is here




The next ZK Hack IRL is happening May 17-19 in Kraków, apply to join now at zkkrakow.com 



Launching soon, Namada is a proof-of-stake L1 blockchain focused on multichain, asset-agnostic privacy, via a unified shielded set. Namada is natively interoperable with fast-finality chains via IBC, and with Ethereum using a trust-minimised bridge.

Follow Namada on Twitter @namada for more information and join the community on Discord discord.gg/namada. 



Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.

Dive deeper and discover more about Aleo at http://aleo.org/



If you like what we do:


Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree

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Episode 322: Definitions, Security and Sumcheck in ZK Systems with Justin Thaler

In this week’s episode, Anna and Kobi chat with Gal Arnon, Ph.D student from the Weizmann Institute of Science & Giacomo Fenzi, Ph.D. student in the COMPSEC Lab at EPFL. 

Gal and Giacomo are amongst the co-authors of ‘STIR: Reed–Solomon Proximity Testing with Fewer Queries’ and in this conversation, they discuss how their research led them to work on these topics and where the thesis for this particular work sparked from. They set the stage by exploring the history of FRI and discussing some hidden nuances in how FRI works. And then they introduce STIR, a system that can be used in place of FRI, which incorporates various optimisations to improve the performance. 



Here’s some additional links for this episode:


FRIDA: Data Availability Sampling from FRI by Hall-Andersen, Simkin and Wagner
Lattice-Based Polynomial Commitments: Towards Asymptotic and Concrete Efficiency by Fenzi, Moghaddas and Nguyen
DEEP-FRI: Sampling Outside the Box Improves Soundness by Ben-Sasson, Goldberg,  Kopparty and Saraf 
Proximity Gaps for Reed–Solomon Codes by Ben-Sasson, Carmon,  Ishai, Kopparty and Saraf
IOPs with Inverse Polynomial Soundness Error by Arnon, Chiesa and Yogev 
Episode 293: Exploring Security of ZK Systems with Nethermind’s Michał & Albert
Circle STARKs by Haböck, Levit and Papini
Episode 304: Exploring FRI, LogUp and using M31 for STARKs with Ulrich Haböck 
FRI-Binius: Improved Polynomial Commitments for Binary Towers 




The next ZK Hack IRL is happening May 17-19 in Kraków, apply to join now at zkkrakow.com 



Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.

Dive deeper and discover more about Aleo at http://aleo.org/



If you like what we do:


Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree

Subscribe to our podcast newsletter 
Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm 
Join us on Telegram 
Catch us on YouTube 


Episode 321: STIR with Gal Arnon & Giacomo Fenzi

A quick announcement for ZK Hack Krakow, happening from May 17-19 2024 in Krakow (!). 

In the spirit of ZK Hack Lisbon and ZK Hack Istanbul, ZK Hack Krakow will be hosting hackers from all over the world to join us for a weekend of building and experimenting with zk tech. Sponsors for this edition are Mina, O1Labs, Aleph Zero, Polygon, Scroll, Avail, Nethermind and more.

If you are interested, apply as a hacker - there will be prizes and bounties to be won, new friends and collaborators to meet and great workshops to get you up to date on ZK tooling. All happening May 17-19 2024

https://www.zkkrakow.com/

Announcement: ZK Hack Krakow - May 17-19 2024

In this week’s episode, Anna and Brendan Farmer catch up with Ben Fisch, CEO of Espresso Systems. They explore the inner workings of the current L2 sequencing landscape and then discuss how a shared sequencing marketplace like Espresso works. They touch on how MEV plays a part in the new system, how the role of the sequencer can be separated into subroles, how all these parts will work together in such a system and much more.



Here’s some additional links for this episode:


Episode 222: Something Brewing with Jill Gunter and Ben Fisch from Espresso Systems 
Episode 139: Findora with Benedikt Bunz and Ben Fisch 
Episode 88: Accumulators with Ben Fisch
CAPE: Configurable Asset Privacy for Ethereum
CAPE GitHub by Espresso Systems 
Astria Website 
The Future of MEV is SUAVE by Flashbots 
Optimism by Superchain
Ben Fisch - Beyond the Base Layer at EthDenver 
EigenDA
Episode 188: Analyzing Osmosis & Preventing MEV with Sunny and Dev
Episode 216: A Dip into the Mempool & MEV with Project Blanc
Episode 243: Dive Back into MEV with Alex Stokes and Chris Hager
Episode 291: MEV, Mechanism Design & the Censorship Problem with Mallesh M Pai 
Aggregated Blockchains: A New Thesis by Polygon 
Based rollups—superpowers from L1 sequencing by Ethereum Research 
MEV-Boost GitHub




The next ZK Hack IRL is happening May 17-19 in Kraków, apply to join now at zkkrakow.com. 



Launching soon, Namada is a proof-of-stake L1 blockchain focused on multichain, asset-agnostic privacy, via a unified shielded set. Namada is natively interoperable with fast-finality chains via IBC, and with Ethereum using a trust-minimised bridge.

Follow Namada on Twitter @namada for more information and join the community on Discord discord.gg/namada. 



Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.

Dive deeper and discover more about Aleo at http://aleo.org/.



If you like what we do:


Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree

Subscribe to our podcast newsletter 
Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm 
Join us on Telegram 
Catch us on YouTube 


Episode 320: A Deep Dive into Shared Sequencers with Espresso's Ben Fisch

In this week’s episode, Anna catches up with Jordi Baylina, OG Ethereum contributor and Polygon zkEVM Technical Lead. They cover what Jordi has been working on since he was last on the show in 2021. Back then, zkEVMs were still just an idea. Now that many of these systems have launched, they have a chance to look at how these fit into the general L2 landscape. 

They cover Jordi’s view on engineering decentralized systems and how these are rolled out, and the recent research from Polygon, including their AggLayer proposal. They wrap up on what inspires him to keep contributing in the space.



Here’s some additional links for this episode:


Polygon zkEVM
Episode 194: zkEVM with Jordi & David from Hermez
Episode 145: Circom & Hermez with Jordi Baylina 
Episode 304: Exploring FRI, LogUp and using M31 for STARKs with Ulrich Haböck
Episode 303: A Dive into Binius with Ulvetanna 
Episode 313: Revisiting Hardware with Ingonyama




The next ZK Hack IRL is happening May 17-19 in Kraków, apply to join now at zkkrakow.com 



Gevulot is the first decentralized proving layer. With Gevulot, users can generate and verify proofs using any proof system, for any use case.

Gevulot is offering priority access to ZK Podcast listeners, register on gevulot.com and write “Zk Podcast” in the note field of the registration form!



Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.

Dive deeper and discover more about Aleo at http://aleo.org/



If you like what we do:


Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree

Subscribe to our podcast newsletter 
Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm 
Join us on Telegram 


Episode 291: MEV, Mechanism Design & the Censorship Problem with Mallesh M Pai

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