Episode 258: Ultrasound Money & VRFs with Justin Drake

In this episode, Anna explores the concept of Ultrasound Money with Justin Drake from the Ethereum Foundation. They kick off with updates on his work in VDFs, MEV and censorship resistance, alongside his particular interests in ZK and how the progress VRFs have made can be applied in Ethereum’s POS architecture. They then dive into the original concept of Ultrasound Money and where Justin sees it progressing to in the future, including the current status around issuance.


Here are some additional links for this episode:


RISC Zero announce the next version of their ZKVM is now available on GitHub at github.com/risc0


Today’s episode is sponsored by Mina Protocol

The need for private, trustless solutions is clear. A new era of ZK powered decentralized applications is coming – and Mina is the place to build them.

Introducing Mina’s zkIgnite Cohort 0, where developers complete tutorials and build zero knowledge apps, or zkApps, and get rewarded. There are a quarter-of-a-million MINA tokens up for grabs for zkIgnite Cohort 0 participants.
Cohort 0 is finishing soon so head to minaprotocol.com/zkpodcast to get involved today.

If you are tuning in to this podcast later, no worries! Mina will be launching additional zkIgnite Cohorts, just head to minaprotocol.com/zkpodcast to check out the best way to get involved.


If you like what we do:

Previous Episodes

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.

Episode 337: Restaking Research with Naveen & Tarun

In this week’s episode Anna and Tarun chat with Naveen Durvasula about his recent work ‘Robust Restaking Networks’. They discuss Naveen’s early work on matching markets and how this led him to work on mechanism design before exploring how the concepts of restaking were first presented, and how both Naveen and Tarun have been working to better model the mechanisms underpinning restaking, to understand how they work and how they can be optimized.

Episode 336: ZK in Celestia with Connor O’Hara

In this week’s episode, Anna chats with Connor O’Hara from Celestia. After discussing the latest ZK Hack Montréal event where Connor was a judge, they dive into his professional background, the ecosystems he has been a part of and what led him to work on Celestia. They then discuss various ZK-focused initiatives within the Celestia ecosystem.

Zk white

Subscribe

Subscribe to Zero Knowledge podcast on these links:

Join the conversation:

Newsletters:

Support: