Episode 331: Farcaster with Varun Srinivasan

Summary

In this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun meet with Varun Srinivasan, co-founder of Farcaster. They explore the Farcaster project, discussing the ideas that prompted its inception and what separates it from existing social media networks. The conversation explores the design space that Farcaster opens up for devs and the kinds of applications that can be built on top of it.


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ZK Hack Montreal is happening Aug 9 – 11! Apply to join the hackathon here.


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Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.

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

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Previous Episodes

Episode 335: Groth16, IVC and Formal Verification with Nexus

In this week’s episode, Anna chats with Jens Groth and Daniel Marin from Nexus. They catch up on all things Groth16 with the author himself before diving into a variety topics, such as formal verification in the context of ZKPs, the Nexus architecture, the benefits and challenges of building a system from the ground up, folding and IVC plus the properties these offer in a zkVM context and much more.

Bonus: zkSummit 12

Hey! There is no episode this week, but wanted to share an update about zkSummit 12 – happening on Oct 8 in Lisbon. If you want to join, be sure to apply to attend. If you want to apply to speak, the deadline to apply is Aug 15th. Both application to attend and the application to speak are in the same form that can be found @ www.zksummit.com

Episode 334: ZK Research Update with Joe Bonneau

In this week’s episode, Anna and Guille catch up with Joe Bonneau, Assistant Professor at NYU and Research Partner at a16z crypto research. They discuss the research Joe has been working on since he was last on the show in 2019, including Naysayer proofs, Zero-Knowledge Middleboxes, Sealed-Bid Auctions and other ZK-related research projects to date.

Episode 333: Verifiable SQL, Reckle Trees and ZK Coprocessing with Lagrange Labs

In this week’s episode Anna chats with Ismael Hishon-Rezaizadeh, Founder and CEO at Lagrange Labs and Charalampos (Babis) Papamanthou, Head of Research at Lagrange and Co-Director of the Applied Cryptography Lab at Yale University.

They revisit the concepts of zk-powered coprocessors and dive into the work that Charalampos did previous to joining Lagrange on Verifiable SQL. They then explore how this is incorporated into the Lagrange coprocessor system, the work they are doing on Reckle Trees, future work and what all this enables for dApp developers. They discuss their new prover marketplace, the general state of infrastructure and how they are keen to bring more concepts from general computing into decentralized blockchain systems.

Episode 332: Brussels catch up with Hart from Across

In this week’s episode, Anna and Tarun sit down with Hart Lambur irl at EthCC week in Brussels. They start by exploring Hart’s project Across – a cross-chain interoperability solution and sister project to Uma. They explore Across’ construction, the tradeoff space and how this compares to other interop solutions. Then, in ZK Podcast tradition, the group shift gears with a few drinks and explore thoughtful observations on the week in Brussels.

Bonus: ZK Hack Montreal

This week’s ZK Podcast episode will be delayed to Thursday this week due to Brussels mania. In the meantime, we wanted to highlight the upcoming ZK Hack Montreal event, happening Aug 9-11 2024. This is the 4th IRL zk-focused hackathon produced by ZK Hack. Apply now to attend ZK Hack Montreal as a hacker and jump into zk.

Episode 330: Frameworks for Programmable Privacy with Ying Tong and Bryan Gillespie

In this week’s episode, Anna and Guille chat with Ying Tong Lai and Bryan Gillespie about their latest research and works to date. They get to dive into Ying Tong’s work on Zcash, Geometry Research and Halo2 before exploring Bryan’s journey into ZK via Zcash and current work at Inversed Tech.

After catching up, they dive into the pair’s recent work ‘SoK: Programmable Privacy in Distributed Systems’, exploring the classifications and frameworks being introduced.

Episode 329: Building Cryptographic Proofs from Hash Functions with Alessandro Chiesa and Eylon Yogev

In this week’s episode Anna and Nico chat with Alessandro Chiesa, Associate Professor at EPFL and Eylon Yogev, Professor at Bar-Ilan University. They discuss their recent publication; Building Cryptographic Proofs from Hash Functions, which provides a comprehensive and rigorous treatment of cryptographic proofs and goes on to analyze notable constructions of SNARGs based on ideal hash functions.

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