Zero Knowledge

This week, Anna and Tarun chat with Stani Kulechov, co-founder of Aave, about the origin and evolution of the project, the changing DeFi landscape, collateralized debt in crypto, Flash Loans, Flash Minting, Credit Delegation and the future of DeFi.

Quick recap: A Flashloan is an uncollatoralised loan which must be issued and repaid in the same transaction before the blockchain updates the user’s account balances. If it isn’t repaid in this time, the transaction will fail.

We have discussed Flashloans on the show before see this previous episode:
https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/118

Thank you to this week’s sponsor Hermez Protocol!

Hermez is a Layer 2 solution that scales token transfers on top of Ethereum and which can handle up to 2000 transactions per second. Designed for high-frequency tokens, Hermez is a zk rollup which leverages zk-SNARKs for validity proofs and with on-chain data availability.

Hermez's zero-knowledge circuits are developed using iden3’s circuit compiler language, Circom. They also introduce a novel consensus algorithm, Proof-of-Donation, that gives 40% of each transaction fee back to Ethereum community projects as a donation, thereby supporting Ethereum development.

After passing two security audits, Hermez is running a bug bounty program, offering up to 100 ETH to whoever discovers any critical vulnerabilities. We recently had Jordi Baylina, Technical Lead at Hermez, on the show for an interview - you can find that episode here. Learn more about the project and bug bounty at https://hermez.io/

If you like what we do:

Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm -https://twitter.com/zeroknowledgefm
Join us on Telegram -https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjA
Catch us on Youtube -https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYWsYz5cKw4wZ9Mpe4kuM_g
Read up on the r/ZKPodcast subreddit -https://www.reddit.com/r/zkpodcast
Give us feedback! -https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A
Support our Gitcoin Grant -https://gitcoin.co/grants/329/zero-knowledge-podcast-2
Support us on the ZKPatreon -https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge

Or directly here:

ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a
BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz
ZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this episode, Fredrik sits down with Jon Choi from the Ethereum Foundation to discuss the latest scalability grants and what the plans are for the Ethereum Foundation grants in general.

We also delve into what a business model for core infrastructure could mean and how to avoid the tragedy of the commons where no one is willing to invest in vital infrastructure because of the lack of immediate incentive.

Finally, we discuss the general ecosystem, how we can learn from each other, how and what to build and what's needed before Ethereum can really become a platform suitable for mass adoption.

In this week’s episode, Anna and co-host Kobi Gurkan chat with Mary Maller, a ZK Researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. They cover Mary’s journey into cryptography, her work on trusted setups, universal SNARKs and Plookup tables. They also discuss the work she and Kobi did on aggregatable DKGs, what working on research at the EF is like and more.

Here are some links for this episode:

• Caulk: Lookup Arguments in Sublinear Time
• Aggregatable Distributed Key Generation
• Reaching Consensus For Asynchronous Distributed Key Generation
• Updatable and Universal Common Reference Strings with Applications to zk-SNARKs
• Marlin: Preprocessing zkSNARKs with Universal and Updatable SRS
• SNARKBlock: Federated Anonymous Blocklisting from Hidden Common Input Aggregate Proofs
• SnarkPack: Practical SNARK Aggregation
• R1Cs
• ZK Hack Puzzles
• Ep 133: Trusted Setup Ceremonies Explored
• Ep 93: Light clients & ZKPs with Celo
• Bonus ZK Hack Wrap with Kobi!
• Mary's Github: mmaller - GitHub

Check out the @ZeroKnowledge Linktree to find our community links and stay in the loop on upcoming events & more!

If you're building something ZK and could benefit from some early funding – ZKValidator and 0xPARC bring you another ZK Tech Side Round on Gitcoin - GR14. This round has at least $100K in matching pool. The round starts on June 8th and runs for two weeks.

Matching is based on your quadratic voting score (lots of small donations are better than a few big ones). Be sure to choose the tag #zktech to be eligible!

Today's episode is sponsored by Penumbra.

Penumbra is a cross-chain shielded pool and decentralized exchange, allowing users to shield assets from any IBC connected chain and privately transact stake, swap and market make without revealing their personal information or trading strategies to the world.

Visit penumbra.zone to learn more, use the Testnet, and join their discord.

If you like what we do:
Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree
Subscribe to our podcast newsletter
Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm
Join us on Telegram
Catch us on Youtube
Head to the ZK Community Forum
Support our Gitcoin Grant

This week Anna chats with Emin Gün Sirer - CEO Ava Labs and Founder of Avalanche. They chat about the experiences that led him to become interested in distributed systems research and his work as a professor at Cornell that led to the development of Avalanche. They then dig into their novel consensus mechanism which uses the sub-sampling technique, the architecture of the network with the 3 distinct components: X-Chain, C-Chain and P-Chain, bridges and more.

Here are some links for the episode:
Episode 127: Consensus Algorithms & HotStuff with Ittai Abraham
Avalanche on Twitter
Emin’s blog
Paper: Avalanche Platform
Paper: Scalable and Probabilistic Leaderless BFT Consensus through Metastability
Paper: KARMA: A Secure Economic Framework for Peer-To-Peer Resource Sharing
Paper: Majority is not Enough: Bitcoin Mining is Vulnerable
Avalanche’s consensus protocol: Snowflake
AVAX Roadmap
Avalanche grant program

There are a lot of exciting events and initiatives for the ZK Podcast on the horizon!

If you do want to keep track of what’s going on be sure to check out our channels – especially:
The ZK community board: https://community.zeroknowledge.fm/
The ZK Jobs Board: https://jobsboard.zeroknowledge.fm/

Today’s episode is sponsored by Polygon.

Polygon is one of the top Ethereum scaling platforms for developers with more than 130+ mn unique user wallets. They are committed to bringing web3 to the masses by improving scalability and fostering the network effects of Ethereum.

They’re known for Polygon PoS chain and the team is actually working on a spectrum of solutions like - Polygon Edge, which offers developers the capability to build sovereign EVM-compatible chains. As well as a number of fully secured EVM-compatible Zero Knowledge rollup solutions like Polygon Hermez, Polygon Miden, and Polygon Nightfall and the most recently announced acquisition of Mir Protocol, now known as Polygon Zero. These solutions inherit the security of Ethereum and use the power of zero knowledge.

Check out our recent episodes to learn more about the journey of these Polygon projects:
Episode 194: zkEVM with Jordi & David from Hermez
Episode 210: The Road to STARKs and Miden with Bobbin Threadbare

If you like what we do:
Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm
Join us on Telegram
Catch us on Youtube
Read up on the r/ZKPodcast subreddit
Give us feedback! -https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A
Support our Gitcoin Grant
Support us on the ZKPatreon
Donate through coinbase.commerce

In this week’s episode, Anna and Kobi chat with Shumo Chu, co-founder of Manta Network. They discuss the origin story of the project and how they aim to bring privacy to web3. They explore the unique accessibility that Polkadot parachains enable, the work they do on building ZK tooling and libraries for the general ZK community. They then take a look at their plans for a multi-asset shielded pool and the future they have planned for Manta projects and more.

Here are some links for this episode:

• Episode 226: Interoperability with Sergey Gorbunov from Axelar
• Episode 172: ZK languages with Alex Ozdemir
• Manta Network
• Manta: a Plug and Play Private DeFi Stack
• Dolphin Testnet
• ZK Garage
• Blog post: Enabling multi-asset privacy on Anoma
• plookup: A simplified polynomial protocol for lookup tables
• CirC: Compiler infrastructure for proof systems, software verification, and more

Check out ZK Whiteboard Sessions, produced by ZK Hack & powered by Polygon, a weekly educational series of interviews with ZK experts on the most important concepts and building blocks in ZK.

Today’s episode is sponsored by Anoma.

Anoma is a suite of protocols that enable self-sovereign coordination. Anoma's first fractal instance, Namada, is planned for later in 2022, and it focuses on enabling shielded transfers for any assets with a few second transaction latency and near zero fees.

Visit anoma.net to learn more!

If you like what we do:

• Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree
• Subscribe to our podcast newsletter
• Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm
• Join us on Telegram
• Catch us on Youtube
• Head to the ZK Community Forum
• Support our Gitcoin Grant