Episode 243: Dive Back into MEV with Alex Stokes and Chris Hager

In this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun revisit the topic of MEV with Chris Hager from Flashbots & Alex Stokes from the Ethereum Foundation. In this episode, they tease out more of the nuances around MEV and how the field around it has evolved in the last year or so. The team explores what the MEV space could look like after the Merge, the PBS (Proposer Builder Separation) concept, what each role in the MEV landscape will do and the MEV-Boost architecture. They also chat about using cryptographic solutions to prevent some kinds of MEV and some recent work that Tarun released on the topic of MEV, as well as future ideas around MEV aim to democratize or even share the searchers rewards.

Here are some links for this episode:


ZK Whiteboard Sessions – as part of ZK Hack and powered by Polygon – a new series of educational videos that will help you get onboarded into the concepts and terms that we talk about on the ZK front.


ZK Jobs Board – if you are looking to find a new job, or if you are a team hiring, we have a fresh batch of open roles at ZK focused projects. This is a great place to learn about relevant projects and the types of roles they are looking for.


Today’s episode is sponsored by Polygon.

Introducing Polygon zkEVM. Polygon’s vision for zkEVM is simple: developers can deploy any Ethereum smart contract to a Layer 2 and benefit from the scaling power of ZK proofs.

Public testnet is coming soon! If you’d like to learn more about Polygon zkEVM and stay updated on the latest – fill out the form here.


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Previous Episodes

Episode 345: Latest ZK Research with Dan Boneh

In this week’s episode, Anna catches up with Dan Boneh, Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Stanford University. They discuss the focus of his research today, covering new ZK research problems and themes. This includes work on lattice-based SNARKs, ZK for content provenance, ZK in the FHE context, updates on ZK in ML and more!

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.

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