Episode 219: Scaling Ethereum with Polygon’s Mihailo Bjelic

This week, Anna chats with Mihailo Bjelic one of the co-founders of Polygon. Mihailo takes us through the evolution of Polygon and how the promise of web3 has led them to betting big on ZK-focused technologies. We learn about their approach to the two main challenges within their mission to scaling Ethereum – security and data availability; and how their suite of products aims to tackle these. Lastly, we hear about what’s next on the Polygon roadmap to onboarding the first billion to Ethereum – for the products themselves and the ecosystem as a whole.

Here are some links for the episode:


If you’re looking to jump into ZK professionally – head over to the ZK Jobs Board to find openings from some of the top teams working in ZK: https://jobsboard.zeroknowledge.fm/


ZK Hack returns for a 2nd edition with ZK Hack Mini – kicking off on 1st March with a series of workshops and puzzle hacking competitions.

Sign up for the first workshops – on Winterfell and Miden happening on March 1st.


Today’s episode is sponsored by Least Authority.

Least Authority has been making advancements in the ZK space since 2013. This year, they will release the MoonMath Manual, a beginners guide to zk-SNARKs. The manual is designed to enable an audience with only minimal cryptography and programming experience to implement complex, real-world zk-building blocks.

Least Authority has also published a white paper on Zero Knowledge Access Passes or ZKAPs. This privacy-enhancing technology enables users to access services without revealing personal information to the service provider. They are implementing ZKAPs in PrivateStorage, their soon to be released cloud storage service.

To learn more about Least Authority and the upcoming MoonMath Manual visit leastauthority.com.


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Previous Episodes

Episode 344: ZK Events 2024 Recap

This week, Anna and Nico take a look back at some of the ZK Events produced in 2024 by the ZK Podcast, ZK Hack and other adjacent projects. Starting with the live ZK Jargon Decoder hosted in January and spanning the 10 months since, Anna and Nico share behind-the-scenes anecdotes, highlight key talks from the events and share some insight into how the programs for the zkSummit events are created. They wrapped with a summary of some of the themes in ZK that got them talking this year and are tracking going forward.

Don’t forget, this is the last episode of ZK Podcast before we take a pause in weekly shows for the rest of 2024 – but don’t worry we will be back!

Episode 343: Mastering MPC & Memes with Mikerah

This week Anna chats with Mikerah Quintyne-Collins from HashCloak and Stoffel Labs. They discuss how Mikerah got her start in the crypto space and then dive into the work she did at ChainSafe and eventually at HashCloak. They cover Mikerah’s work on privacy preserving tech like ZK, TEE and MPC and learn about what drives her tweet game and the wisdom she has picked up over the years as a technical founder, driven by curiosity… and memes.

Bonus: ZK Whiteboard Sessions Season 2 and a ZK Pod Pause!

Just sharing 2 updates:
1) The ZK Whiteboard sessions are BACK with a 2nd season! These videos will be released every 2 weeks for the next 3 months.
2) The Zero Knowledge Podcast will take a pause on the weekly cadence of the show starting Oct 16th until the end of 2024.

Episode 342: Catch up with Zac and Ariel

This week Anna catches up with Zac Williamson & Ariel Gabizon from Aztec. They cover what each has been working on over the last year, Zac shared updates about the development of Aztec and the finalization of their underlying ZK system: MegaPlonk. Ariel discussed his latest research on IVC with his publications of the ProtoGalaxy and Stackproofs works and how properties of this systems brought him and Zac to start working together again.

Episode 341: coSNARKs with Ais and Lukas from TACEO

This week Anna and Nico chat with Lukas Helminger and Ais Connolly from TACEO. They discuss Lukas & Ais’ early work in cryptography and privacy preserving technologies, the founding of TACEO and their recent work on coSNARKs – or Collaborative SNARKs – that combine MPC and ZK. They explore how these coSNARKs are created, their coCircom language, the characteristics of these systems as well as how they can be applied in the real world.

Episode 340: Is Cosmos Dead? A critical look with Zaki Manian

This week Anna and Zaki Manian dive into the Cosmos ecosystem and ask the question: is Cosmos Dead? They explore key events, teams and players who worked on Cosmos during different eras before teasing out the strengths and structural flaws that made the project what it is today. The conversation wraps with a discussion around new initiatives aimed at reviving the ecosystem and aligning factions in Cosmos together towards a central goal.

Episode 339: TEEs with Andrew Miller

In this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun catch up with Andrew Miller. They cover his early work on consensus, ZK and MPC before switching focus to the topic of his current work: TEEs. They map his evolving opinion on TEEs and explore why they could be seen as an optimal solution to many of the blockchain challenges.

Episode 338: On Trust Infrastructure with Arnaud Schenk

This week Anna and Nico chat with Arnaud Schenk, one of the original co-founders of Aztec and creator of the Polaris Fellowship. They discuss Arnaud’s recent blog post ‘On Trust Infrastructure’, exploring the down sides of a trustless system, the need to make online community building more possible and how programmable cryptography may play a role in these solutions. They explore the history of computer culture, the rejection of institutions by mid-90s internet culture and how the seeds for this were set by the 60s counterculture.

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