This is epicenter episode 476 with guests at a rose and Kobe
gherkin. I don't know, those is the
founder of everything, ZK. So ZK, pod, ZK Summit, ZK,
validator antique, a hack and Kobe is the head of research at
geometry and also works with Anna on DK validated and seek a
hack. And that's also cryptography
advisor had Sealab. So lots of hats here before we
speak with Anna. Anna and Kobe about the state of
the ZK. Ecosystem that me tell you about
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before the holiday. Good to be here.
Yeah, fun to be on the other side.
It is crazy. Isn't I was I was recently on
Sebastian's podcast to talk about knows his chain and it's
really funny because it's so different on the other side.
Yeah, on my show actually. Yeah, if been on YouTube before
like ages ago. So cool.
Fantastic. So we're here to talk about the
state of the ZK ecosystem because obviously it's been,
there's been a lot of changes over the last year or so and
it's been extremely difficult to kind of keep up for me as
someone who does not pay attention to this full time, but
maybe also for you guys. So maybe kind of definitely, we
need your help but before we kind of dive into the ins and
It's of this ecosystem. Let's get some background on
both of you and I'll start with Ana.
Over 10 years ago, I think are almost 10 years ago.
I was the founder of a web to start up and I was, you know,
learning. I was working a lot with
engineers at the time, but it was very web to is video.
I was good, good experience, good education, and then come
2017. I sort of started to enter this
like blockchain world and it was really, like, going back to
start, like everything. I had learned in the previous
Tech, Says, I sort of had to unlearn and at the same time,
like I wanted, I remember like 2017.
I wanted to actually do a new project.
I wanted like a second Technical startup that I would that I
would start. But like right then, at least
the people that I was coming into contact.
They were working on like deep client software, like it was
like the deepest 10 most technical stuff and it was like
yes there were some people pitching these ideas for like
you know, Dental coin or like yeah, we'll use blockchain Plus.
Us XYZ. But it was so it was so kind of
like funny to really get involved, you kind of needed to
be like an engineer. You needed to be like deep in it
and so I was like, okay I can't really be an engineer.
I can't really even do product at this point.
So what can I do? And somebody?
So I had joined parody sort of for like a special project just
to get a taste for what was going, and Frederick who became
my co-host pitched this idea, like, why don't we do a podcast?
We're both new in the industry. We have a bit of a technical
Background. Why don't we do it?
And so that's where the ZK podcast starts and that's where
yeah, if I think if anyone's listening, and if they know
anything about what I do, so I think that's where my work
probably starts for them. The ZK kind of family kind of
proliferated or at least I mean you started with the ZK podcast
but now you have the ZK Summit and seek a hack DK.
Validate and they're all like, independent, but interrelated
kind of project, right? Yeah, you also just, you
introduce me just earlier is like the, you know, in charge of
all things iike, that is not true.
There are so many projects that I have nothing to do.
And actually, I mean, I always loved telling the story of like
why did we call it the zero knowledge podcast.
Like a lot of people ask me like, oh, did you work in
cryptography before? I was like, absolutely not.
I was around Engineers a fair bit but we for like and if
anyone listens to the early episodes, like I think until
episode 11. We just refer to the podcast as
like this podcast because we had no name and we like floated some
really like crappy crappy names before that.
And then someone kind of came around at some point and said,
hey why don't you call this? Like we know about this weird
form of zero, like of cryptography over there like
this, it's called zero knowledge.
You have zero knowledge. Why don't you call your shows
your knowledge? It was kind of a joke.
We laughed a little, I'm entering.
It was like it was a bit of a dick.
Nothing about this. My about it.
The thing is, we thought, why don't we do it?
I mean, literally at the time, the only people who were
listening, we're like the people in the room with us, so it
really didn't matter. Well, we called it, there was
very low stakes, but yeah, so we picked that name and then around
that time, I wanted to do an event in Berlin.
Actually about something like, with some of the people I was
meeting in the ecosystem, so I just wanted to throw a All
blockchain event, but because the name of our show was Zero
knowledge, I called this event, the zero-knowledge summit, and
then I shared that event with a bunch of people.
It was like, people could apply to talk and I shared it as far
as and why does I could? And it reached the ear of, or
the desk of Howard, woo over in California, and he got that,
like, oh, there's a zero knowledge Summit.
This is awesome and then he applied.
With like, eight of his friends and I at the same time, had
contacted Zuko and I did get strad from the ECC now to come
over. And so even though it really
just started as like this podcast Summit, but called
zero-knowledge Summit. It became by the time we
actually had that event, the first zero knowledge Summit and
I actually do get to claim first because there was an event
called ZK. Proofs just a month later.
But we were, I think I'm pretty sure the first and then from,
then on, like I was doing this twice a year.
So like the ZK Summit. Also, just introduced me to new
ZK, topics, new, ZK, people and that Community grew.
And at the same time, the podcast, like it really, I mean,
and I really don't recommend anyone listens to the early
ones. They really suck but like they
really aren't very good but like around episode 21.
That's where we actually first start mentioning zero-knowledge
Tech and we do like intro to ZK. But from that point forward, as
we were learning more about it. So now we're talking like 2018,
right? It's still really early in ZK.
There's only, I don't know, maybe 100 people in the world
who know what this is really. So it's like it just was kind of
Lucky. Yeah, I'm really glad we picked
that name. To get validator started in
2019, I met my co-founder will and I had pitched him.
I mean, I actually it was on my show.
I think it was the Bison. Trails guys, sort of pitched me
on being a validator there. Like you could be a validator
to, and I'm like, really. Anyway, I pitched it to him.
And then we started and there, we started validated on Cosmos,
and then polka dot near extended.
And then, yeah, I mean, it was, this is super cool because it
gave me like a still think. Like if you go back to that,
Earlier part of the story. Like I have always wanted to be
building something in this space, but it's been really hard
or was really hard in 2017 to figure out what that was.
And this validator role was like a really good way for us to
start engaging in actually doing something like participating
adding value to what we're what we're talking about and it was a
great way to also be introduced into Cosmos and polka dot and
understand deeper. I mean, I kind of already knew
polka dot but like these other ecosystems what was happening?
Who are the players? It definitely influenced like my
thinking about the entire space. It probably changed a little bit
like, who I would have on his guess, what?
I was curious about well, and then zkv has also developed.
So we expanded past just sort of Cosmos and polkadot, and we
actually started working with Kobe in 2020 or 2022,
officially. But I know we started talking
about it in 2021, you know, like the near the end.
Yeah. Yeah.
What we hadn't been able to do before because we been really
partnering with existing infrastructure providers before
that, right? Like we worked with bison trails
and course one and but when we join forces with Kobe, it was
like, we could actually start to be early on the networks and
actually running the infrastructure ourselves and
learn even more what was happening and it's been really,
really exciting. So that's the KV.
And this is also a super nice way to actually hand over to
Kobe. Kobe tell us about, you know,
you're part of, you know, the story what happened so far
before you met Anna and, you know, started working on DK
validators with her. Yeah.
So I'd like about 10 years ago. I think like I kind of have this
opportunity in my master's degree to give a lecture about
any topic that that I wanted. And, you know, I heard about
Bitcoin fears before that. Like, I heard about it in a
podcast, actually, like the Security Now podcast, and how
about how he was trying it out and how, how cool it is, and how
he was minding, 50 Bitcoins on his personal computer and that
was cool. But I never got into it and like
that's like when I got into it like back then and got to
understand how it works that kind of what captured me.
But since then, I left my job back then and started working on
this space. Like I've done some products in
Bitcoin, like multisig bullets and things of that sort.
But quickly after that, I double down on cryptography because
that was my favorite. Topic and like going forward a
few years. I also discovered the topic of
snarks which I really liked was like looking very deeply into Z
cash and how things work there because basically they were the
only ones that deployed snarks. Pectin like nobody else know how
to do that. And yes, I was just let the
development in startup that was doing snarks for For about two
years and afterwards. I joined see Labs leading the
cryptography. There we were doing very
interesting. Things around light clients with
snarks, which are starting to become more common.
Now, actually, also we worked with, and I've been there, like,
we can share about it later. That's where I kind of got to,
to even do more advanced cryptography.
Effie and like, create products from scratch and deploy them to
users. So around this topic of stars
but also threshold cryptography, which is a topic that I also
really liked and was working with the team Foundation a bit
around this and jumping forward again last year about a year and
a few months we started geometry with Tom and That's the main
thing that they do today but also the zika hack and the KV
with Anna and others actually there's four of us on zkv.
Yeah we should mention our co-founders on that which is
Philip and we'll so there's four of us who do it.
Yeah maybe Kobe. We just you just sort of hinted
at this thing this. So the first project we worked
on together was The plumo Trusted set up.
Yeah. And it was I had been doing sort
of a series on the show about trusted set.
UPS, like finding out how everyone was doing these things
and like everyone had heard sort of the Radiolab version so
that's the earliest one that Z cash did.
But there was like advancements by the time we did it and plumo
this this ceremony like Kobe was it the first time that we did
like that that parallelization or like, the batching was
happening. I think so, there were other
forms of it that were happening. So Aztec was doing something
that was also optimized. By pipelining.
So you do that. You start that subsequent
contribution start before you verify the fully, the previous
ones. But in diploma, we did do this
out of order execution where people could contribute in
parallel. But if any of them fails, then
this whole batch is like fails and, but if they don't fail,
then you get like, 10x times better performance of that was
That was cool. I-i'm not sure anyone else is
doing that today and especially, because plumes was the huge set
up. Like it was more than like a few
hours like even more than 10 hours in some computers for
every participation. And I took part in the abstract
one that you just referred to basically, you are given a slot
and you basically had to be online at that point in case you
had to have like your Docker image running.
And basically was, it was, I think mine was on Christmas.
And so clearly a few years back. I don't, I don't remember when
exactly was but yeah I remember kind of having to be there you
know at the right time and kind of getting everything started in
took a couple of hours and yeah it was I think ignite that was
this, the Aztec one. I think that was 2019 2020.
I got a t-shirt. I still wear to bed every now
and then so my husband's always particularly excited when he
gets to go to bed with, you know, like Sarah.
Moni participant, which is says on the teacher at number
participant, you are unfortunately, it's not you,
it's the same one but that would be a pretty intensive swag
print. Actually if everything's going
to be fantastic. So yeah, do you want to talk
about geometry a little bit because you said that you found
it. Go for it.
It. Yeah, we started geometry last
year. It's kind of a combination of
research house where we do. Many cool cryptography.
Things that we try to show how to use new kind of constructions
or protocols in a way that people may not may have not seen
before and maybe Inspire building new products around
those. And but also it's, we invest in
companies. That have this kind of deep
research DNA within them. So there is a bunch of
cryptography related companies some Bridge related companies
and some of them around scaling, some of them touch other tab
aspects of cryptography or others.
But, yeah. Basically, we would like to talk
about, with all these Founders that have something unique in
their approach to How to build work products that utilize
interesting research, zika hackers.
Like the project that for the last year at least, I've been
super excited about Zeke. A podcast is sort of General.
The case Summit is very much new research seek a validator, is
running validators on various networks.
And then using some of those funds to like, do events and
bring more ZK, into the Network's zika hack.
And this is something that came from, I guess, a brainstorm with
you, Kobe, I'd wanted to do is he can hack a On forever and it
is happening, it's still coming, but I've been wanting to do it
forever, but it was like late 2021, and it was still too early
to really get people together on such large-scale.
A lot of teams weren't sure they weren't ready, even like the
tech wasn't quite ready. And so we were talking about
this is like I really wanted to do this hackathon.
What can we do instead? And Kobe had this idea of doing
a like CTF like competition where you break, ZK, protocols,
you'd find a bug and you'd exploit it and it And it was it
was like very very challenging. And then around this, we
designed this event called zika hack, which is like and we've
now done it a couple times but it's usually like a weekly or
bi-weekly Workshop Series. So you have like every week
Workshop or twice a week workshop and then during the
sort of break between these workshops, there's a puzzle
competition running and we did the first one in 2021 kind of
through ZK, validator actually and it was seven weeks and it
was super intense. Dance.
And it was super good. Because what we found out, like,
you find out who are the experts in in these different teams like
people, you might not really know.
They're not necessarily at the events, they're not necessarily
presenting the papers. Some of them are but like but
then they were hacking and you got to know their work and they,
it was really exciting. It introduced.
I know both of us to a whole new group of people that we hadn't
met before. Yeah.
Definitely. And how often do you have the ZK
hacks? Well, so far, we've done three.
I think we're going to try to do them twice a year.
So we just wrapped one up. We just wrapped up CK hack 3,
which we decided to do for weeks this time which was like
probably a better more same amount of time to be running
these events and we had three puzzles and I think we had
almost 30 hackers. So the thing is the puzzles are
really hard so they're not like everyone come.
It's like only the most hardcore can really do them.
It's the most Stubborn. Yeah, but the the workshops I
think we had over like two thousand.
At least two thousand unique signups this time around for the
workshop. So we like these are the
workshops are much more focused for people who are either
beginner, beginner intermediate who want to use the tools, they
want to learn how to like use Noir or you know what exactly
some of these architectures look like under the hood.
So yeah, it was really fun. So seeing that there Several
weeks long. I assume they're all online.
It's like people. Yes, there's a big playlist.
Nice. Yeah, I'm going to there's the
Whiteboard sessions right? Oh yeah.
Yeah, we also started to create content around this so we
partnered with polygons to do the ZK whiteboard sessions,
which are like it actually. And then we got Dan Bonet to do
the first three. So, it's like a mini, ZK course.
And then a whiteboard sessions sort of inspired by the near
whiteboard sessions. I always want to give them The
shout out because like yeah we were really inside.
We were like, that's awesome. Why don't we try doing it for ZK
soku? How do people access this?
This is all on the Zero knowledge podcast, YouTube
channel mastic so they can check that out.
We're link to this in the show notes.
Are you guys ready to talk about the state of the ecosystem?
Let's do it. Fantastic.
So we had our first, your knowledge episode 7 years ago
with Eli and obviously Then I mean, and the next couple of
years, it wasn't all that difficult to kind of keep up
with things that were happening because there weren't all that
many, right? So basically and even maybe like
a year or a year and a half ago, basically, there were like they
were stuck net. There was matter Labs with ZK
sink. There was a mess.
That's now part of a polygon with the ZK e VM and then there
was maybe at Aztec and tornado but in the realm of kind of like
ZK stuff that was more or less. It right there was so into in
like fall of 2019. There was this like flurry of
papers. So around that time there was
like all these new ideas but I think you're right that like the
implementations I mean there was there weren't that many of them.
There were maybe just like academic implementations and
those companies really came out during the bear Market.
Last bear market like and I remember like some of the
hackathons like the eith global hackathons.
That's for some of those teams actually formed for the first
time. Like the they would have like
done these little projects that sort of like, tried to take some
of this research and put it into practice and those form the
companies that you mentioned. But yeah, there were still only
a handful that's wild to think about that.
And I think one thing that, you know, made the change or like
caused the change, was the fact that the tolling developed Lat
you back, then if you wanted to build something, that is best
best Enrique you had to take. Let's say Z caches
implementation and try to write your own smart or contracted
with verified. And you would have to write your
own like JavaScript implementation and compile it
webassembly or whatever. It was super complex but around
that time. Like, and that's actually came
both from The A-Team van, Action with Socrates, but also from the
I'd entry team which is now they're messed him, right?
And from Geordie, they created this circum environment.
And those two made a big difference in terms of tooling
because now you could build something that was end to end
and you could have client implementations proud from it
and then verify our own aetherium and it unlocked
disability for a lot of people to create the UK Solutions.
And And think that made a big change and I your knotting, you
agree. What I think a lot of people
when they thought of the idea of ZK stuff, they kind of they did
leap ahead to the use cases and then as they started to, like,
try to do those, they were like, oh wait, there's like none of
the stuff you need to do that at all.
And so it was like catching up with the dream over the last few
years and those toolkits are so key and there's there's new ones
too. That have come out since then
like yeah, there's many yeah, there's a At.
I mean, if you look at ZK dsls even there's just like we've
done entire talks on that because there's a, there's a map
of the dsls actually just give it talk about it and like, seek
a proof and I had the list, I couldn't cover it all, even like
there's so many, so, yeah, it's crazy.
The I mean, it's all so it's super exciting and maybe let's
talk about the OD OD said we just mentioned where they at
now. So give us.
Which one do you want us to start on?
Maybe like any one of the layer choose in whichever order you
want. So, the casing Stark X, CK e VM,
you know, add text to a certain, I mean, I think tornado is the
one that we have covered, you know, to a large extent on this
podcast before but we both had someone from tornado on before
the recent events and afterwards.
We had some lawyers on. So I think tornadoes probably
we're good on that, but yeah. Let's talk about stock.
Net matter Labs zika, evm at stack.
Well, I think we can say that, like, if you look at matter, I
mean, they a few years ago, they were like they were building.
They were building a DSL. There was like, a lot of the
core research so I actually had them on the show a ton then to
talk about like circuits and exactly like that part.
But then since then I think like as far as I've seen, they've
kind of gone heads down to implement and ship.
So if there is a shift often like it's it is much more about
delivery and it's a little bit less about Experimentation.
I mean this is projecting but this is what I was sort of what
I what I got from them and I don't know Kobe.
You can probably talk more about the Stark net emergence.
Yeah, I think that Stark net was what was a nice development?
Let's say from Stark where ecosystem.
Like, before we had Stark net, which I think started, like, end
of last year, like, August something like this.
If I remember correct, I'm not sure.
Sure. Before that, if you wanted to
use the offering from Stark, where you basically had to
partner with them and they would build with you, this custom
solution based on Stark X and Stark.
Annette was giving this ability to people to participate in a
general-purpose roll up. So that was a big change like
that was a really major thing. I think that back that back when
starting it started, I didn't understand what it was like.
Like I didn't understand it the Commendation but when I tried it
I like it clicked, then I got it and the ecosystem, there grew
very rapidly. There are a lot of people that
are learning Cairo which is the language that is running inside
Stark net. It gives you a lot of
flexibility and power and it's still think there's a long way
to go like it's still not decentralized like most of the
l2's today. Like, there are some failure
modes that are not very pleasant, like things can get
stuck. That's fine.
Like still early days in some sense but it's a very welcome
necessary development to give this power to users that they
didn't have before to run things at scale and applications that
they couldn't run on L1. So that was really cool.
They were really I mean I think they were incredibly influential
on the ZK V Mt. I mean the Z KV M teams.
There's all these other Z KV M teams now.
And I think even like in the conceptualizing of this like,
super fast environment, that's still connected to a blockchain.
But you can, like do a lot more. It inspired people to like be
like, oh my God, I could do this kind of app for this kind of app
and it goes so much further than what you often could do on
blockchain. But yeah, I know that there's a
number of different teams like Coaching that problem, usually
still using Starks actually or features of starks like they're
using some step that Stark like but yeah you have over at
polygon of My Den and you have risk 0 which I think kind of
Falls in that category as well. What about how mass and the Z KV
M does that is that kind of like we're said it.
Well, I mean, so ZK, e VM, we just did a wrap up episode
actually over on my show, we talked about like the summer of
ZK. E VM announcements.
There was this funny week in July, where, like all the teams
were like, we're doing. See KVM.
But I think, I mean, they all have different approaches.
I think they do work together fairly well.
I think there's like a friendliness in it.
Yeah. I think they're trying to find a
way to really scale aetherium. I think that's a very etherium
focused solution. It's like you can your its
solidity. Don't have to change the
workflow, the style, you can really redeploy things.
And I think that we don't know yet.
If there's a winner or if they're just like a, they School
separate environments that all have their own unique benefits
to using. Yeah, I think it's actually
Kobe. We were talking about this,
like, do we know what phase they're really at.
Like, I think you can sort of do something with them, but they're
not necessarily like full-on. Yeah, I think like from like if
we go even higher level we have like two major approaches to
Zeke evm today. Like there was the one that you
can sink was taking and the one that Stark where I was taking
which was called warp there that they say, you know, you don't
need full compatibility, you just need to take solidity
programs which is what people write and compile them to some Z
KV M. So some people also, you know,
photo At what the term ZK e VM means like.
Is it compelling solidity or is it running Evie?
A road is like there was this I think there is still is this
battle around this term and but other kinds of themes like
scroll and her meds and pulling on zero there.
Take another approach which is actually running the evm byte
code directly and Which is, which ensures greater
compatibility. So it's not like full
compatibility steel because, you know, some things are more
expensive when you run it in ZK, like hashes.
So you have to sometimes modify gas costs, but maybe you can
carry over some security analysis.
Maybe you can carry over a lot of the more special
functionality that you've developed.
Maybe you've even written some evm assembly code so you can use
that, but, yeah. I think that's in the last few
months we've seen a bunch of them launching test nuts, which
is cool. So, a lot of them are functional
like you can use crawl public test, net.
You can use her Mass. That's not all of them are.
It's, um, it's an increasing level of compatibility.
I think each week, so you can run things, but sometimes not
everything is proven like, not all the opcodes are.
Stood. So you will get the feeling of
how is it to use it. So you, you have the appearance
of a proof being created but sometimes not everything is
being actually proven. So it's more like, sometimes a
simulation of the experience and but it's going, it's like an
honest evaluation of the experience.
Like, this is what they aim that basically can use every tool you
you have today and it will work as is.
But yeah, I think that that's just a Where they are today like
they're functional. They're usable not may be fully
compatible and nearly not, not at all audited.
Like the order audits are going to be very complex.
Yeah, I want to talk about audits definitely later just
because it seems like such a fraud.
Yeah, thing that. Yeah, that could go wrong.
Anna. Could we didn't and they just, I
think Jordi just shipped it off. Off to audit, right?
Yeah. So like, I think that they
shifted off to others and like, I think Jordi has a very kind of
been or like Jordan the team, right?
They've been, I think kind of training auditor has in some
sense, like, they've been teaching them about what it is
means to audit that code wild. So, yeah, I think things are
starting to be audited, but that's polygon her man's, that's
the exact you'd asked about Frederick is.
So that's, I guess the Stage that that one's at.
So if you if you kind of zoom out and kind of look at, you
know, the landscape of all these different altitudes, I think
kind of the, the high school question, you know, you know,
your essay question would be like contrast and compare how
they I mean. So basically, if I'm going to
deploy on a ZK layer to, how do I decide, which one to deploy
to? How are they different from one
another? Think wait question for you,
Kobe, but if you're writing solidity code, would it look
very different to you to deploy on any of the CK EVMS?
Depends. Like if you were talking about
like let's say the hair medicine School variance, it would feel
very similar like it would feel, I think also similar to how you
do it on your theory. Mm, you just need to change the
RPC basically and and you're done.
But also basically those just kind of just transliterate like
opcode by opcode, right? So basically it's kind of like
you just translate like word by word and then basically using
the same grammar that you use before you just, you know, put
them one after the other, but that's different from say Start
net and CK signo. Yeah, exactly.
They are, they just transpile solidity into their own VM.
So that becomes very, very different.
The security analysis is very different there.
You have to audit the compiler from from like this transpiler.
That's what you have to focus on and then also their VM, but
yeah, it's it's very different. So but let's maybe let's let's
not talk about the audits now. So I think we are all happy to
agree that you know audits are important and difficult and we
will talk about them later. So say everything is audited and
in principle, we know that it works as designed how do these
different layer tours differ from each other.
Kobe who explained it? Didn't you?
It's this idea of are you transpiling or not, right?
Yeah. I mean like doing those in
general like or just ZK e. Vo, just The zk1.
So I mean I totally get that there.
Some that kind of transpose them up, code by opcode and some that
don't. But other than that, kind of
they arrived at the bytecode differently.
Do they have advantages and disadvantages?
Yeah, so I think that if you compare the ZK e VM once I think
that it remains to be seen, so we don't know yet, basically
maybe some teams will go further in the decentralization efforts
and they will do that earlier. Maybe they create some more
interesting environments for validators approvers to
participate in and maybe some of them will have better
performance, although I I think all of these teams are extremely
strong and will reach other cat performance and maybe some of
them will be more receptive to feedback or will do upgrades
faster. All have better bug bounties, so
I'll be more confident that things are are more secure
there. But I think the statistic is chi
chi VM is really hard today. So it's more about Titania and
maybe correct me if I'm wrong here Kobe, but I think that like
on the Stark were side, it's all Starks under the hood like full
Starks the way that it was kind of originally presented.
Whereas on, I know some of the others the kvms they're using
like fry, right? Like they're using.
Like there's like one step that sort of like Stark, a fine a
snark, but it's quite a different thing under the hood.
Yeah, I think that basically every team is taking another a
different approach. So like you say, Stark were is
doing Starks like pure Starks with some additions.
The her mess team, they're taking this kind of layer
approach that you mentioned. So basically, they're doing
long, but with fry. So, like the use this
transparent polynomial, commitment that came from Starks
but this is it With Blanc, so that's interesting.
And then they do snarks on top of that to optimize the
verification and the scroll, and the same Foundation teams.
But they are doing, they're doing long with this kcg
commitment, which is, it's a trusted setup, but it's
universal one so that you can reuse it.
And they're doing a very complex architecture of many circuits
that interact with each other and they do.
The kind of recursive layer composition until they reach the
evm itself, or the layer, 1 itself where they verified.
But just just as a side note, there is a very good right up
from a real Gap ISM that describes how you go from air to
wraps, which wraps is kind of long.
And it shows how similar Starks and along with fry our, ah,
which kind of bridges this gap, which, which she chose, how like
that basically. Everything is very, very
similar. You just let one another thing
and then it becomes one with fry instead of Stark so it's really
cool. Okay, if you if you got none of
this we will link to the to the paper.
It'll be referred to in the show notes I'm sorry.
So basically maybe can I can I kind of summarize this with in
principle all of these tools do the same thing and which one is
best remains to be seen when they're live and operational and
some of them have failed or not failed and, you know, gone up in
Flames for zucchini, evm. I think that's true.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's Best Buy which by
which metric is probably also worth because there is that
aspect of it being decentralized or not, like you might actually
suffer. Exactly.
Might suffer some performance but you'll get like a more
secure system in a way. Yeah, exactly.
But and all of them currently, I mean, none of them actually have
a decentralized sequencer, right?
No, not yet. So, all of them have like a
centralized choke point. So it doesn't really.
I mean, if, as long as you have like, one centralized choke
point, Doesn't really matter how many more centralized choke
points. You add, right?
Depends. It really depends because if you
have a centralized sequencer, then you can do so much damage
that you can do all the damage. If the L2 is designed correctly,
you can still Force the sequencer to take transactions
in so they can forcibly sensor you and they can hurt liveness,
but they cannot hurt security because the security is
guaranteed by the proving process itself.
So there's so much damage that this Central chokepoint can do,
which is a really nice feature. That that's what's really
compelling about this kind of zikr Roll-Ups because it can
limit the damage that the centralized party can do.
On the scale of decentralization, where do all
of these set very early, all of them, okay?
Look, but I think all of them at least have the intentions, the
right intentions. And I think they have this
honest, intentions to do the right things but just they need
to ship what they have first and move towards the centralization
later when things are functional.
So yeah. We all know that this is
incredibly complex technology. So so we talked a lot about
l2's, but mostly zk8 EVMS, exactly via but there is Aztec
which we haven't talked about which we might want to.
Yeah, if you were on. So, like Aztec, first of all,
just a team that I adore. I think there's such great
people. I love hanging out with them
when I'm in London and they created, they launched, ZK
money, I think, In the last two years they recently have like
launch sort of a I don't know if you call it competitor DSL to
Sir. Calm.
What do you think Kobe? Is it good?
I think the cool I mean if you treat all those Acadia cells
like all the languages is competitors in sure but I think
it brings something really new to the table so I really like
it. And they do talk about private
computation but I wouldn't put them in the category of ZK.
E VM, no. I think they're, they're very
different kind of structure. They're not a zika evm.
They're not even a z, KV M but under the not have this
recursive power yet like that would allow private smart
contract structures and but that's where this new language
that you are the devil. It is aimed to to enable that.
So basically would write this the circuits with Noir, which
looks like a normal programming language and then you would be
able to deploy it inside. There is a key role up and
that's why it's like they call it a ZK, ZK roll up so that you
can verify with in the Z key roll up, more, ZK, so that's
what they do, that's what you are.
Would give them. But basically, before we move
on, just to make sure that we give the right picture, there
are other tools, right? Like there's Stark net, and
there is like, you say, Zeki sink, and all of them are not
even evm. Like they're just VMS.
And if you want to choose them, it might be for other reasons,
right? Like you would choose them for
the reasons that you're willing to learn a new language or a new
environment. And you want to enjoy this
greater performance. That is give But you suffer from
may be other other other reasons, because maybe you need
to do new security analysis. Maybe you need to train more
developers, you taking a bet on a new VM, maybe it won't be as
expressive as you want. Because in the evm, you know,
what you can do and what you cannot maybe here, you will find
that you can do more, but maybe you find that you can do less.
So there you just have to do some homework and maybe
experiment and see whether it even fits your use case.
So, how is how is the performance different?
If I go to write? I think isn't it still?
I think Kobe. Can you answer?
That is is there clear metrics on these?
No, I think it's a community. This is one of the things that
we need to develop. Like I actually had a chat about
this with Tom today. Like, we need to develop some
framework for benchmarks for all of these other tools like so
it's interesting like to do The Apples to Apples comparisons
here. It's not clear.
Yeah, absolutely. So basically, if if you know I'm
going to build a new app that I want to run on one of those are
two is and basically it's going to need a shitload of computer.
It is need lots of data availability, and so on, and
basically, kind of having like this click through experience,
where basically tells you, you should definitely deploy to
Stockton it or something. So, I think that would be Super
interesting. Yo, or even some like common use
cases and like, create all this. This common use case on all of
the different L tools and just evaluate how a performant it is.
That would also already be big progress, I think so.
We've talked about L2 is for bit.
Now, let's talk about at once. It used to be that secant was
the zkl one and everything else is sort of like, building, ZK on
top of things. So there's a lot of teams that
are like. Also there may be in other
ecosystems like penumbra or Manta.
That's talk about kind of where the odd ones out and what they
usages like and whether their life at all or whether they're
kind of in proof of concept stage because basically the
Legacy privacy-preserving anyone's to me that would be
easy cash and more narrow. And it's gotten a bit quiet
around those, but obviously the ones that you just cited,
they've gotten a lot of press recently.
So where are they at? Maybe just one thing about the z
cap. So mineiro I was never, I've
never, really explored very much, but I will say, it's
something about the Z Cash, Crew is like in terms of research,
they released Halo 2 and it's been adopted, by almost like,
like just all over the ecosystem.
So in terms of like output on Research, they're still really
top in a way but it's true that like, I think a lot of the other
projects are bringing because they're often at least exploring
programmability or being able to deploy things on top of them and
not just In money transfer, a lot of them are also proof of
steak or they've like evolve the consensus to fit a little bit
more of The Narrative of today. I think.
So the one that went live, probably the earliest of that
batch is Mina. They went live in 2021, I
believe. And you had side note, I'm an
advisor to them. So just disclosure there.
So they used to present this idea of snaps.
And this was like ZK apps on like on Mina.
But they've And that so it's ZK apps now and as far as I know,
like there are there's a cohort of people building things on
test nut now. So like, it's if you want to
start really playing with these things, it's there to play with
its maybe not yet live on the main net.
And I don't know what it's going to take to get there yet, but
yeah, that's that's kind of cool.
That's part of the reason why I think the ZK hackathon idea can
come to fruition this year because there is finally, It's
where people can really build stuff without like having
studied the stuff for months and months and months in advance.
And going on. I mean, okay, so Elio is I know.
They're in like test net 3. I Kobe, I don't know.
Have you tried it out? I don't know, actually, how much
you can do yet. Well I haven't tried The
Testament three itself but I like the bullet with the tool
chain that they have like they like Elliot try to develop a
whole stack of things so they developed a new language.
They develop this new Block Chain that has programmability
in the UK and the language that they have is also very
interesting because it combines both the blockchain part and the
circuit part in the same syntax, which is really fun to see.
And really Fun to work with. And so I've tried that and that
that's really cool. But yeah, it's like it does have
like this concept of proof of sufficient work which is an
interesting approach to to mining because like the kind of
a hybrid I think right now with profits take a fork and like the
use this part because the proof of pork itself uses snarks.
So the use this part of basically incentive Is creating
hardware-accelerated, snark. Provers in some sense.
So it's kind of a whole circle and so it's your nice ecosystem.
Yeah, we might want to mention actually.
So the Elio team also like, they put together the Z prize this
year, which was an attempt to like push and fund Hardware
acceleration, which makes sense with their product.
And I think the results just came in, we did a little Alex,
did a presentation. Ation it seek a hack last week.
So yeah, there's like I think and from what I understood like
there were actual there was progress made in Hardware like
ZK proving it's pretty cool. That that worked that it
happened. It was like industry-wide zkv.
So partly sponsored it too. So like yeah, we all got
involved to try to push that. Yeah, I think like Hardware
acceleration like the results maybe were surprising for some
people and you got better than expected, and you actually got
some interesting breakthroughs, like, in even in things that we
haven't seen progress in like decades.
So, and people now that they see that the market is serious about
paying them for Hardware acceleration.
They're not looking at this and actually making interesting
breakthrough breakthrough. So that's really We'll see.
There's also a few teams that have emerged like projects that
just work on it. Like, Hardware to, like omers
project. Whose name.
I always mess up your mama. Jama.
There we go. Exactly.
Yeah. I should mention ZK.
Validators of is an investor in a few of these projects and I
think geometry might be as well. So yeah geometries investment in
June when I am I here there's other projects, like other L
ones but they live within the other ecosystem.
So we have penumbra that's like it's Going to be a privacy decks
within the cosmos ecosystem. Like using IBC.
You have a Noma, which I feel like sort of is in Cosmo.
Sort of is in polka-dots like, also this like bridged to other
ecosystems project and I know they're doing at rest it, set up
right now. That's going really well from
what I could see. It's like a lot of people wanted
to, we both participated. Yeah.
We both participated and seek. If he participated, we also have
the polka dot side. You have Manta.
That is like there's EK environment.
And actually, I will say a little Like ZK validator.
We're actually doing a workshop series with them to use xcm with
Moonbeam. So it's actually called privacy
and Moonbeam, and it's using Manta and Moonbeam.
And it's cool because like I think by putting the project out
in the world, we sort of pushed the developers on both sides to
make sure that we could like, actually make exactly this
combination this. So actually, there will be
applications building kind of over that through our workshop
at least like experimental applications Yeah, and like
beyond the ones that are, let's say.
Z key Focus, you also have more and more support in other L ones
that are not General is equally focused, but they add ZK
support. So it seems started with that
like that that was a big, big leap, but so did that and I
think so. So it's done that and Falcon to
some extent are using like I think they're also like maybe
the biggest snark consumers at this point, maybe by like
proving power. So you have this kind of deep ZK
integration in a lot of these other elements as well.
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