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.

Here’s some additional links for this episode:

• ZK Jobs Board
• ZK Hack Website
• Episode 211: It’s a wrap! ZK Hack Takeaways & What’s Next!
• ZK HACK IV - Overview & Workshop Introductions: map featured at 1m28s
• ZK Hack Discord
• ZK Hack Whiteboard Sessions
• Proofs, Arguments, and Zero-Knowledge by Justin Thaler
• ZK Hack Whiteboard Session 1 - What is a SNARK? with Dan Boneh
• ZK Hack Whiteboard Session 2 - Building a SNARK (Part I) with Dan Boneh
• ZK Hack Whiteboard Session 3 - Building a SNARK (Part II) with Dan Boneh
• Groth16 Malleability by Geometry
• Episode 309: ZK Jargon Decoder with Nico Mohnblatt
• Zellic Wins Second Place in ZK Hack IV Blog
• SSTIC
• Techiepriyansh GitHub
• Sampritipanda GitHub
• Niooss-ledger GitHub

Applications to attend zkSummit11 are now open, head over to the zkSummit website to apply now. The event will be held on 10 April in Athens, Greece.

This is an invitation to be part of a transformational ZK journey.

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

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.

Here’s some additional links for this episode:

• Introducing Blobstream by Celestia
• Succinct Labs SP1 GitHub
• ZK Jobs Board
• Episode 255: Verifying Consensus On-Chain with Succinct
• Episode 286: Paris 2023 Recap with Uma, Zaki and Tarun
• Alpha Succinct
• Hugging Face AI
• Episode 296: Zeth, Bonsai and RISC Zero with Brian and Jeremy
• Episode 251: Exploring RISC Zero with Brian Retford and Jeremy Bruestle
• Understanding Lasso and Jolt, from theory to code by Ragsdale, Zhu and Thaler

Applications to attend zkSummit11 are now open, head over to the zkSummit website to apply now. The event will be held on 10 April in Athens, Greece.

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

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

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.

Here’s some additional links for this episode:

• Episode 158: Threshold Cryptography with Omer Shlomovits from ZenGo
• Episode 258: Ultrasound Money & VRFs with Justin Drake
• The first ever SNARK proving ASIC tweet by drakefjustin
• Episode 266: ZK Hardware Sessions with Zprize Pt. 1
• Episode 267: ZK Hardware Sessions with Zprize Pt. 2
• ZK10: ZPU: The Zero-Knowledge Processing Unit - Yuval Domb
• Supranational Website
• Accseal Twitter
• Episode 311: The Launch of Celestia and Beyond
• Episode 308: Avail’s Approach to DA with Prabal Banerjee
• Episode 301: EigenLayer @ Devconnect
• ICICLE GitHub by Igonyama
• Lazzo + Jolt by a16z
• HyperPlonk: Plonk with Linear-Time Prover and High-Degree Custom Gates by Chen, Bünz, Boneh and Zhang E
• The Sum-Check Protocol over Fields of Small Characteristic by Thaler
• Episode 303: A Dive into Binius with Ulvetanna
• Sumcheck 201 Paper by Ingonyama

Applications to attend zkSummit11 are now open, head over to the zkSummit website to apply now. The event will be held on 10 April in Athens, Greece.

This is an invitation to be part of a transformational ZK journey.

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

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.

Here’s some additional links for this episode:

• ZKP2P
• zkSummit11
• Axiom’s Halo2 library
• Episode 302: ZK for web2 interop with zkLogin & ZK Email
• ZK Email
• 0xPARC
• 0xPARC Videos - Introduction to Circom
• ZKP2P - FAQ on UPI
• India: the frontier of payments innovation
• ZK Hack Whiteboard Sessions
• Fibonacci Sequence
• ZK Regex Website
• Gnosis Pay
• TLSNotary
• Plaid

Applications to attend zkSummit11 are now open, head over to the zkSummit website to apply now. The event will be held on 10 April in Athens, Greece.

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

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

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.

Here’s some additional links for this episode:

• Episode 151: John Adler on Optimistic vs ZK Rollup and the data availability problem
• Episode 208: Digging into Data Availability with Ismail Khoffi from Celestia
• Episode 268: A Rollup-Centric Future & Sovereign Chains with Mustafa Al-Bassam
• Ismail Khoffi of Celestia (Sovereign Radio)
• Celestia Improvement Proposal GitHub
• Introducing the Celestia Improvement Proposal Process
• Introduction to Arbitrum rollups with Celestia as DA
• Introducing Blobstream: streaming modular DA to Ethereum
• Raspberry Pi Foundation
• Succinct Network
• Episode 308: Avail’s Approach to DA with Prabal Banerjee
• Episode 217: Information Theory & Blockchain with Sreeram Kannan
• Cosmos Hub
• Modular Summit Website

Applications to attend zkSummit11 are now open, head over to the zkSummit website to apply now. The event will be held on 10 April in Athens, Greece.

As Aleo is gearing up for their mainnet launch in Q1, this is an invitation to be part of a transformational ZK journey.

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

In this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun chat with Noam Nisan, Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Principle Researcher at StarkWare Industries and one of the pioneers in the field of Algorithmic Game Theory. They cover his extensive research and academic background, starting with his work on complexity theory as well as Algorithmic Game Theory and his current work on blockchains and Tokenomics at StarkWare.

They discuss his recent blog post; Simple Tokenomics for a Proof-of-Stake Utility Token, comparing the measurable Tokenomic outcomes of different live PoS systems and explore how Noam aimed to better communicate best practices for those designing these systems, plus much more.

Here’s some additional links for this episode:

• Simple Tokenomics for a Proof-of-Stake Utility Token by Noam Nisan
• Algorithmic Game Theory by Nisan, Roughgarden, Tardos and Vasirani
• The Elements of Computing Systems by Nisan and Schocken
• Game Theory, Alive by Karlin and Peres
• Algorithmic VS Mechanism Design
• The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• Combinatorial agency by Babaioff, Feldman, Nisan and Winter
• Noam Nisan Google Scholar
• From Nand to Tetris Part 1

Applications to attend zkSummit11 are now open, head over to the zkSummit website to apply now. The event will be held on 10 April in Athens, Greece.

As Aleo is gearing up for their mainnet launch in Q1, this is an invitation to be part of a transformational ZK journey.

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

Quick reminder about our upcoming ZK Job Fair - happening tomorrow Feb 6th at 7pm UTC, right after the finale of the online ZK Hack IV event. This is a great chance to meet with hiring teams, and if you are looking to jump into ZK professionally, you won’t wanna miss it!

Sign-up for our ZK Hack IV Session #4 so we can share the link with you!

https://events.ringcentral.com/events/zkhackiv-4

** This episode uses visual aids and slides throughout, you may want to check out the video version here**

In this week’s episode, Anna and Nico Mohnblatt from Geometry Research host a ZK Jargon Decoder episode. Based on Nico’s ZK Jargon Decoder Website, they discuss some of the confusing terms and concepts commonly used by the ZK community. The session aims to be digestible for those still in the early stages of their ZK learning journey, but it does take a dive into the depths of detail every now and again!

This episode uses visual aids and slides throughout, so you may want to check out the full video version of this discussion over on the ZK Podcast YouTube channel. This ZK Jargon Decoder Session is also very well complimented by the ZK Whiteboard sessions. Nico specifically references sessions 1, 4, 5 and 6.

Here’s some additional links for this episode:

• ZK HACK IV - ZK Jargon Decoder
• ZK Jargon Decoder GitHub
• ZK Hack IV Sessions Playlist
• ZK-WALDO: A Simple Zero Knowledge Proof
• ZK Whiteboard Sessions: What is a SNARK? With Dan Boneh
• ZK Whiteboard Sessions: SNARKs vs. STARKs with Bobbin Threadbare and Brendan Farmer
• PLONKish Arithmetization - ZK Jargon Decoder Description
• ZK Whiteboard Sessions: PLONK and Custom Gates with Adrian Hamelink
• Oracles - ZK Jargon Decoder Description
• FRI Summary 1 - Contextualizing STARKs, ALI, FRI, and DEEP by RISC Zero Study Club
• R1CS - ZK Jargon Decoder Description
• ZK Whiteboard Sessions: Lookup Arguments for Performance Optimisation with Mary Maller
• The Billiard Ball Example presented by Campbell R. Harvey
• ZK Podcast Episode 21: Introduction to Zero Knowledge Proofs

Applications to attend zkSummit11 are now open, head over to the zkSummit website to apply now. The event will be held on 10 April in Athens, Greece.

ZK Hack IV online is now live, sign up for the final session on Tuesday 6 Feb here. For the latest news on the event check out the zhhack.dev/zkhackIV website.

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

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

In this week’s episode, Anna catches up with Prabal Banerjee, co-founder of Avail. They deep dive into Prabal’s career, starting with his work in academia, his move to Polygon and to his spinning out the Avail project. They discuss how the project was built, tech decisions and the motivations behind them as well as their use of KZG, validity proofs and their position within the Ethereum and wider blockchain ecosystem. They go on to revisit Data Availability and the interaction with different parts of the modular blockchain stack, comparing Avail to competing systems and cover edge-cases and their impact in a DA-secured stack.

Here’s some additional links for this episode:

• Polygon.technology
• Fraud and Data Availability Proofs: Maximising Light Client Security and Scaling Blockchains with Dishonest Majorities by Al-Bassam, Sonnino and Buterin
• Episode 208: Digging into Data Availability with Ismail Khoffi from Celestia
• Episode 268: A Rollup-Centric Future & Sovereign Chains with Mustafa Al-Bassam
• Episode 301: EigenLayer @ Devconnect
• Episode 217: Information Theory & Blockchain with Sreeram Kannan
• Substrate Website
• Starknet Website
• SubWallet Website
• Solana Website

Applications to attend and speak at zkSummit11 are now open, head over to the zkSummit website to apply now. The event will be held on 10 April in Athens, Greece.

ZK Hack IV online is now live, sign up for the next session on Tuesday 30 Jan here. For the latest news on the event check out the zhhack.dev/zkhackIV website.

As Aleo is gearing up for their mainnet launch in Q1, this is an invitation to be part of a transformational ZK journey.

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

This week, Anna caught up on all things Aleo with Howard Wu co-founder of the Aleo Network & Alex Pruden executive director of the Aleo Foundation. Howard was last on the show back in 2020 when Aleo was in its infancy, so the group dive into how the project has evolved over the last few years, covering lessons learned along the way as well as technical decisions, detours, breakthroughs and reflecting on initial goals as they built out the system.

Here’s some additional links for this episode:

• Episode 144: Aleo with Howard Wu
• Episode 38: Intro to zkSNARKs with Howard Wu
• zk-creds: Flexible Anonymous Credentials from zkSNARKs and Existing Identity Infrastructure by Rosenberg, White, Garman, and Miers
• zPass by Aleo
• Cloudflare
• Aleo HQ GitHub for ZEXE
• Leo by Aleo
• Penumbra

ZK Hack IV online is now live, sign up for the next session on Tuesday 23 Jan here. For the latest news on the event check out the zhhack.dev/zkhackIV website.

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

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