Zero Knowledge

In this episode Anna Rose and Nico Mohnblatt chat with Binyi Chen , researcher at Stanford University . They discuss his work on lattice-based folding schemes, revisit LatticeFold and LatticeFold+, and cover how lattices enable low-cost, post-quantum-secure folding by replacing Pedersen hashes with Ajtai commitments. They discuss the early folding work from 2023 and how it has evolved and explore...

In this episode, Anna Rose and Tarun Chitra chat with Sora Suegami and Enrico Bottazzi from Machina iO . They explain indistinguishability obfuscation (iO) technology and how they are working to bring this powerful cryptographic primitive from theoretical territory into the practical world. They discuss how the pair got into iO and how new assumptions like all-product LWE and evasive LWE will help...

In this episode, Anna Rose chats with Alex Pruden and Conor Deegan from Project 11 . They revisit the topic of quantum computing and explore the threat it poses to cryptographic systems like blockchains. As blockchain technology becomes increasingly integrated into global financial infrastructure — especially through stablecoins and banking rails — the stakes for quantum security continue to rise....

In this episode, Anna Rose and Guillermo Angeris talk with Kevin Lacker , creator of Acorn , a theorem prover utilising AI. They explore what theorem provers are, their history, and how they're used today. Kevin shares how Acorn brings in AI to simplify the proving process, letting users naturally write mathematical statements while the system checks the correctness of those statements. It's built...

In this episode, Anna Rose and Tarun Chitra catch up with Sid Gandhi and Calum Moore from Payy to discuss the Payy private payment system and the newly released Payy credit card. They explore their focus on building a user-friendly privacy focused product, how ZK tooling advancement makes this possible, and a walkthrough into how it works with the Visa remittance system. Sid and Cal explain Payy's...

In this episode, Anna Rose chats with Théo Madzou and Michael Elliot from ZKPassport and Obsidion about their ZK-based identity solution. Théo shares his start in ZK through ZK Hack hackathons using Noir, while Mike shares his path from Bitcoin and MakerDAO to working on zkID systems. They explain how they teamed up to build ZKPassport, a non-profit public-good ZK identity solution project,and how...

In this episode, Anna Rose and Kobi Gurkan chat with Arnaud Brousseau and Jack Kearney from Turnkey about verifiable key management using trusted execution environments (TEEs). They share how their past work on custody and validators inspired them to build more sophisticated key management tools and some of the qualities TEEs enabled.  The discussion covers a range of challenges and techniques: th...

In this episode, Anna Rose and Nico Mohnblatt catch up with Ian Miers from the University of Maryland , starting with his work on seminal ZK blockchain research, Zerocoin and Zerocash and the creation of the first zk-focused blockchain project Zcash. They then explore the history of trusted setups, including the trusted setup bug discovery in Zcash, and subsequent improvements like Powers of Tau....

In this episode, Anna Rose chats with David Z and Oleksandr (Sasha) from Privado ID and Billions Network about the evolution of ZK-based identity systems, tracing their roots back to iden3 in 2018, one of the earliest projects to pioneer ZK for on-chain identity. They discuss their origin as the iden3, their creation of the influential Circom DSL, the move into Polygon ID, the spin-out as Privado...

In this episode, Anna Rose and Guillermo Angeris speak with Bobbin Threadbare and Gaylord Warner from Miden to explore their zkVM and edge blockchain architecture. The group also reminisces on how they've each been a part of the ZK Whiteboard Sessions over the years. Bobbin shares Miden's earliest beginnings from Winterfell at Facebook through its development within Polygon to the recent spin-out...

In this episode, Anna Rose and Tarun Chitra chat with Huijia (Rachel) Lin from the University of Washington to explore indistinguishability obfuscation (iO), often described as the 'holy grail of cryptography'. iO is a powerful primitive that, if fully realised, could have profound implications for privacy tech as a whole. Rachel helps break down the concept for listeners who may already be famili...

In this episode, Anna Rose and Tarun Chitra chat with Vlad and Murat from Lighter , a ZK-powered perp DEX on Ethereum. They explore how perps, short for perpetuals/perpetual trades, emerged as a crypto invention, how the exchanges offering perps evolved over the years, and the tradeoff space between transparency and privacy, specifically for market makers. Vladimir discusses the advantage of build...

In this episode, Anna Rose and Nico Mohnblatt catch up with Justin Drake from the Ethereum Foundation to explore Ethproofs , asking what exactly is Ethproofs: is it a meme, a platform, a benchmarking effort and/or an emerging community? Justin shares the emergence of the project within the EF, the influences that shaped it and what Ethproofs comprises of today. He also shares the goals of the proj...

In this episode, Anna Rose and Kobi Gurkan chat with Vikas Rushi from PSE , and Ying Tong  to explore t wo topics at the intersection of ZK and the real-world data : zkPDF and zkID. First they dive into zkPDF , a set of tools for proving facts on digitally signed PDFs. Vikas talks about the challenges of parsing data inside zkVMs—working with decades-old specifications that use many different enco...

In this episode, Anna Rose and Tarun Chitra chat with Miranda Christ , a computer science PhD student at Columbia University , about the intersection of cryptography and AI through watermarking techniques. Miranda shares her research on developing imperceptible ways to prove that content was created by AI models, covering everything from simple red-green word lists to sophisticated pseudorandom er...

In this episode, Anna Rose welcomes back Daniel Kang  professor at UIUC and founding technical advisor at VAIL , for an update on ZKML and how the space has evolved since early 2023. Daniel covers the 2023-2024 cohort of ZKML tools including zkCNN, zkLLM, EZKL, and his original ZKML project, while introducing his new project ZKTorch, which offers a flexible hybrid of specialized and general-purpos...

In this episode, Anna Rose and Guillermo Angeris catch up with Muthu Venkitasubramaniam , Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University and cofounder of Ligero . They discuss how Ligero’s small memory footprint makes it a good choice for client-side proving, as well as the importance of programmable compliance in blockchain. The conversation explores the differences between ‘MPC in the he...

In this episode, Anna Rose and Nico Mohnblatt speak with Dan and Sinu from TLSNotary to trace the project’s journey from early Bitcoin forum ideas to its current role as a foundational protocol maintained by PSE . Dan recounts the origins of TLSNotary as a tool for cryptographically proving web data, while Sinu explains how the project was revived to provide modern TLS attestation. The conversatio...

In this episode, Anna Rose and Nico Mohnblatt speak with Goblin Oats from Tonk and grjte from Bain Capital Crypto to explore the emerging world of local-first architecture. Goblin shares the evolution of Tonk from an experimental lab working on blockchain games to a product that enables anyone to build personalised local-first software using natural language. grjte discusses her Groundmist project...

In this episode, Anna Rose speaks with Florent Tavernier from Self and Marek Olszewski from Self and Celo to explore how Self are bringing identity onchain using ZK, the Sybil protection that offers, and the origins of OpenPassport. The discussion covers Self's approach to supporting different forms of ID, the challenges of disparate cryptographic standards, and how government signatures can be us...

In this episode, Anna Rose and Tarun Chitra catch up with Kostas Kryptos from Mysten Labs to explore the latest ZK innovations being built on Sui . Kostas shares updates on zkLogin and introduces zkAt (ZK Authenticator), a new research project enabling programmable and updatable access control for accounts where Groth16's trusted setup and the generated toxic waste is used in a very novel way.  Th...

In this episode, Anna sits down with David Wong from zkSecurity to discuss the impact of AI on the field of zero-knowledge auditing. David shares how his team is integrating AI agents into their workflow, the opportunities and challenges this brings, and how the role of the human auditor is evolving as AI becomes more capable. They also cover the unique aspects of auditing ZK-based systems, how th...

In this episode, Anna and Nico speak with Abhi Shelat and Matteo Frigo from Google about their work integrating zero-knowledge proofs into the Google Wallet. They discuss the technical decisions behind the Anonymous Credentials for ECDSA system, including the challenge of designing a proof system where proving must be efficient enough to run on the client device in a large-scale consumer applicati...

In this episode, Anna speaks with Madhavan ( Maddy ) Malolan from Reclaim Protocol about his work on zkTLS and its applications in web data verification. Maddy shares the journey of building Reclaim, from initial attempts at implementing DECO to developing their current proxy-based solution. The conversation explores the technical challenges of implementing zero-knowledge proofs for HTTPS connecti...

In this episode, Anna and Nico speak with Matthew Klein and Albert Garreta from Nethermind about their work implementing and advancing lattice-based cryptography systems, particularly focusing on folding schemes and their applications in zero-knowledge proofs. Matthew and Albert share insights from their implementation of LatticeFold and discuss the evolution of lattice-based systems, including ne...