Quantum Punks with Alex and Nicola

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 ID with a focus on B2B privacy tools and verifiable credentials, and the recent launch of Billions Network, which aims to build a scalable network of humans and AI agents with mobile-first verification and progressive proofs. They compare their broad, composable approach to projects like Self, Rarimo, and ZK Email, while highlighting future plans for reputation layers, on-chain economies, and AI agent identities to enable accountable interactions in a decentralised world. Related links: Privado ID introduces Billions: The First Global Human &amp; AI Network Billions Launches Mobile App for Digital Identity Verification in the Age of AI DEEPTRUST: VERIFIABLE IDENTITIES AND REPUTATION FOR AI AGENTS Iden3 Protocol Specifications (Version 0) W3C: Verifiable Credentials Overview Poseidon: ZK-Friendly Hashing European Digital Identity ZK HACK - Introducing Circom 2.0 - Iden3 Iden3: Sparse Merkle Trees Billions App Transforms ID Verification with Privacy-First Liveness Checks &nbsp; &nbsp; ZK Whiteboard Season 3 Module 2 High-Performance Engineering for SNARKs, w/ Jim Posen<span...

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. &nbsp; Bobbin shares Miden's earliest beginnings from Winterfell at Facebook through its development within Polygon to the recent spin-out as an independent project. The team discusses their custom ISA designed for blockchain use cases, and the multi-stage compilation pipeline that supports it. The conversation also covers Miden's pragmatic approach to privacy implementation, their plans for gradual decentralization starting with a centralized L2, and how they incentivize users to keep state off-chain through multidimensional fee structures. &nbsp; Related links: ZK Whiteboard Episode 373: Ethproofs, zkVM Benchmarks &amp; the Unstoppable Rise of ZK with Justin Drake Episode 369: Ligero for Memory-Efficient ZK with Muthu Episode 367: Local-First with grjte and Goblin Oats Episode 365: ZK in Sui &amp; zkAt with Kostas Kryptos Episode 210: The Road to STARKs and Miden with Bobbin Threadbare The Miden Compiler v0.4.0 – A Major Milestone ZK Whiteboard Sessions - Module Four: SNARKs vs STARKs with Bobbin Threadbare ZK13: Lifted FRI: A uniform multi-domain polynomial commitment scheme ZK Study Club - STARKs overview - Session 4  ZK Hack Berlin Winterfell Fruity Friends Gaylord's X post that inspired the interview!

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 familiar with ZK, FHE and TEEs, clarifying how iO differs but also some of the similarities in the assumptions upon which it is based. Rachel also explains how it differs from similar concepts: garbled circuits and functional encryption. &nbsp; The discussion covers the evolution of iO research in her work over the last decade, how the cryptographic assumptions have hardened since that time, and what iO can offer in terms of precise, controlled information revelation. &nbsp; Related links: Indistinguishability obfuscation from well-founded assumptions Indistinguishability Obfuscation from DDH-like Assumptions on Constant-Degree Graded Encodings On Lattices, Learning with Errors, Random Linear Codes, and Cryptography How to Use Indistinguishability Obfuscation: Deniable Encryption, and More Functional Encryption for Quadratic Functions, and Applications to Predicate Encryption Garbled circuit &nbsp; &nbsp; ZK Whiteboard Season 3 just kicked off with our first Module all about Hash Functions! In this, we have host Nico and guest JP Aumauson walk us through how to build a Hash Function. JP was also previously on the show to discuss the topic, you can see his episode here! See all Whiteboard Sessions including previous seasons here.    &nbsp; **If you like what we do:** * Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree * Subscribe to our podcast <span...

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 marketmakers. Vladimir discusses the advantage of building a perp DEX with a team consisting of both quants and engineers. They also cover how ZK has come to be used in some projects but not others, what opportunities verifiability can unlock, and why their project favored building custom ZK circuits over using existing zkVMs. &nbsp; Related links: ZK Whiteboard Sessions  zkLighter White Paper A primer on perpetuals Hyperliquid docs dYdX GMX Lighter Discord &nbsp; &nbsp; Check out the latest jobs in ZK at the ZK Podcast Jobs Board.  &nbsp; &nbsp; **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 &nbsp; **Support the show:** * Patreon * ETH - Donation address * <a...

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 project and how this initiative supports the snarkification of the EVM by providing standardized benchmarks for the growing ecosystem of zkVMs. Their discussion covers the evolution from monolithic zkEVM approaches to RISC-V-based systems, and movement towards mandatory proofs and eventual zkVM enshrinement. &nbsp; Related links: Episode 369: Ligero for Memory-Efficient ZK with Muthu Episode 321: STIR with Gal Arnon &amp; Giacomo Fenzi Episode 258: Ultrasound Money &amp; VRFs with Justin Drake Episode 120: ZKPs in Ethereum with Vitalik Buterin &amp; Justin Drake Episode 74: Blockchain 101: Randomness and Random Beacons with Justin Drake ZK11: SNARK proving ASICs - Justin Drake L2BEAT Picus  Announcing Protocol &nbsp; &nbsp; Check out the latest jobs in ZK at the ZK Podcast Jobs Board.  &nbsp; &nbsp; **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 <span style="font-weight:

In this episode, Anna Rose and Kobi Gurkan chat with Vikas Rushi from PSE, and Ying Tong to explore two 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 encodings, and tackling practical use-cases like bank statements and ID verification. They also explain how issuers, such as India’s DigiLocker, can generate proofs in a way that protects individual privacy. Next they cover zkID and the EF’s work on building a system that would meet the EU’s Digital Identity Framework requirements ahead of its 2026 rollout. Ying Tong explains how the EF’s work on zkID differs from existing zk-based identity projects, particularly through its device-binding requirements, the cryptographic community’s feedback to the EU Commission, the trade-offs between proof systems, PSE’s work on standards and more. They wrap up with a chat about the challenges of revocation in both systems, and what’s next for the projects.  Related links: Episode 367: Local-First with grjte and Goblin Oats Episode 366: Bringing ID Onchain with Self Episode 363: Bringing ZK to Google Wallet with Abhi and Matteo Episode 362: zkTLS with Maddy from Reclaim Episode 358: Building ZK Registries Onchain with Rarimo Episode 353: Making ZK More Human with ZK Email Episode 330: Frameworks for Programmable Privacy with Ying Tong and Bryan Gillespie Community Privacy Residency Anon Aadhaar DigiLocker <a...

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 error-correcting codes. &nbsp; The discussion explores the cryptographic properties of watermarks - including completeness, soundness, and undetectability - and how these parallel the properties we see in zero-knowledge proof systems. Miranda explains how watermarking differs from other cryptographic approaches like ZKML by only modifying the sampling process rather than the underlying model weights, making it computationally lightweight and practical for deployment. &nbsp; Related links: Episode 206: Distilling DeFi Primitives with Guillermo, Alex and Tarun My AI Safety Lecture for UT Effective Altruism Google SynthID Amazon Public Watermark Detector How ChatGPT could embed a ‘watermark’ in the text it generates - New York Times Wall Street Journal on OpenAI not Deploying Watermarks A Watermark for Large Language Models Undetectable Watermarks for Language Models Watermarks in the Sand: Impossibility of Strong Watermarking for Generative Models Pseudorandom Error-Correcting Codes Ideal Pseudorandom Codes &nbsp; &nbsp; Check out the latest jobs in ZK at the ZK Podcast Jobs Board<span style="font-weight:...

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-purpose approaches. The discussion explores practical applications like verified FaceID, proof of prompt, and proof of training, along with the technical challenges of adding ZK proofs to machine learning models. Daniel shares insights on the performance trade-offs between specialized cryptographic systems and generic circuits, and how ZKTorch aims to offer both flexibility and speed for proving ML inference. Related links: ZKTorch: Open-Sourcing the First Universal ZKML Compiler for Real-World AI ZKTorch: Compiling ML Inference to Zero-Knowledge Proofs via Parallel Proof  ZK Torch GitHub Accumulation by Bing-Jyue Chen, Lilia Tang, Daniel Kang Episode 369: Ligero for Memory-Efficient ZK with Muthu Episode 356: ZK Benchmarks with Conner Swann Episode 364: AI and ZK Auditing with David Wong Episode 265: Where ZK and ML intersect with Yi Sun and Daniel Kang Bonus Episode: zkpod.ai &amp; Attested Audio Experiment with Daniel Kang ZK13: ZKTorch: Efficiently Compiling ML Models to Zero-Knowledge Proof Protocols - Daniel Kang AI Agent Benchmarks are Broken VAIL zkCNN: Zero Knowledge Proofs for...

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 head’ and error-correcting code perspectives, and how well-established primitives influence the design of modern ZK systems. They also debate the challenge of adding ‘ZK’ privacy back into systems without it, why proving EVM traces may be absurd, and what kinds of guarantees might exist around the results of vibe coding. Related links: Episode 363: Bringing ZK to Google Wallet with Abhi and Matteo Episode 326: MPC &amp; ZK in Ligero and Ligetron ZK13: Ligerito: A Small and Concretely Fast Polynomial Commitment Scheme - Kobi Gurkan ZK13: Vibe coding ZK Apps with Ligetron ZK Platform - Muthu Venkitasubramaniam  ZK10: Analysis of zkVM Designs - Wei Dai &amp; Terry Chung  Ligerito: A Small and Concretely Fast Polynomial Commitment Scheme Ligero++ - Reducing proof length of Ligero Adding Zero-Knowledge to STARKs - Talk by Ulrich Haböck Aurora - comparing prover times of STARKs vs Ligero WYSTERIA: A Programming Language for Generic, Mixed-Mode Multiparty Computations Samaritan: Linear-time Prover SNARK from New Multilinear Polynomial Commitments Brakedown: Linear-time and field-agnostic SNARKs for R1CS <a...

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 conversation covers the use-cases for verifiable web proofs, the different modes these interactive protocols can take, and the broader impact of this technology on leveraging siloed user data. Related links: Episode 325: Web Proofs with Tracy from Pluto Episode 354: The Founding of Zero Knowledge Systems with Austin Hill Episode 362: zkTLS with Maddy from Reclaim 2013 Blog Post ‘tlsnotary - cryptographic proof of fiat transfer for p2p exchanges’ TLSNotary Whitepaper DECO: Liberating Web Data Using Decentralized Oracles for TLS Primus Labs (Previously PADO) Town Crier: An Authenticated Data Feed for Smart Contracts &nbsp; &nbsp; Check out the latest jobs in ZK at the ZK Podcast Jobs Board.  &nbsp; &nbsp; **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 **Support the show:** * <a