In this week’s episode, Anna has a one-on-one chat with Alex Ozdemir, a PhD student at Stanford researching formal methods, cryptography and distributed systems. Alex’s work is closely tied to the world of generalized computations within zero knowledge systems. He is one of the main developers of CirC, an infrastructure framework for building zero knowledge languages.

In their conversation, Alex and Anna take a bird’s eye view of the current landscape of zk languages and libraries. Alex explains the history and current state-of-the-art of circuit-building tools, touching on libraries like Libsnark, Bellman and more comprehensive tools like Arkworks; hardware description languages like Circom; and the more dev-friendly family of RAM-register languages like ZoKrates, Pequin, Cairo, Leo and many more. Here, the race is still on as a number of academic and business-oriented teams grapple with limitations to memory access & performance given by zero knowledge proving systems.

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Here are all the links for this episode:

• An intro dive into the world of zero knowledge languages and ZoKrates
• Circom and Hermez with Jordi Baylina, Zero Knowledge episode 145
• zk-SNARKs for Scale with Matter Labs, Zero Knowledge episode 72
• zkStudyClub about CirC
• zkStudyClub on Polynomial Commitments
• StarkWare’s Eli Ben-Sasson on STARKs and Cairo, Zero Knowledge episode 96
• Pratyush Mishra on all things Arkworks, Zero Knowledge episode 169
• Alex’s Stanford page and paper on CirC.

Thanks to this week’s sponsor, Mina Protocol.

Mina is the world’s lightest blockchain, creating a private gateway between the real world and crypto.

The layer-one protocol replaces the traditional blockchain with a zero-knowledge proof, ensuring a super-light and constant sized chain that allows participants to quickly sync and verify the network.

The entire chain is, and always will be, about 22kb — even as it scales. And SNARK-powered dApps, called Snapps, allow access to verified real world data from any website for on-chain use.

The ecosystem is growing fast ahead of Mina's upcoming mainnet launch, with validators and community members in more than 120 countries.

There are still opportunities to get involved at the ground level. Visit minaprotocol.com to find out more.

Join the community at Mina’s free virtual Illuminate Summit on March 28th, visit illuminate.minaprotocol.com to secure your spot.

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