Episode 172: ZK languages with Alex Ozdemir
In this week’s episode, Anna has a one-on-one chat with Alex Ozdemir, a PhD student at Stanford researching formal methods, cryptography and distributed systems. Alex’s work is closely tied to the world of generalized computations within zero knowledge systems. He is one of the main developers of CirC, an infrastructure framework for building zero knowledge languages. In their conversation, Alex and Anna take a bird’s eye view of the current landscape of zk languages and libraries. Alex explains the history and current state-of-the-art of circuit-building tools, touching on libraries like Libsnark, Bellman and more comprehensive tools like Arkworks; hardware description languages like Circom; and the more dev-friendly family of RAM-register languages like ZoKrates, Pequin, Cairo, Leo and many more. Here, the race is still on as a number of academic and business-oriented teams grapple with limitations to memory access & performance given by zero knowledge proving systems. The latest Gitcoin Grants CLR matching program is live! Gitcoin is the easiest and most effective way to support Zero Knowledge and help us produce great content every week. With CLR matching, each contributor counts. Even $1 goes a long way thanks to the quadratic funding concept. To top it all off, Gitcoin supports zero knowledge-native payment solutions like ZkSync! Click here to reach our Gitcoin page. Here are all the links for this episode: An intro dive into the world of zero knowledge languages and ZoKrates Circom and Hermez with Jordi Baylina, Zero Knowledge episode 145 zk-SNARKs for Scale with Matter Labs, Zero Knowledge episode 72 zkStudyClub about CirC zkStudyClub on Polynomial Commitments StarkWare’s Eli Ben-Sasson on STARKs and Cairo, Zero Knowledge episode 96 Pratyush Mishra on all things Arkworks, Zero Knowledge episode 169 Alex’s Stanford page and paper on CirC. Thanks to this week’s sponsor, Mina Protocol. Mina is the world’s lightest blockchain, creating a private gateway between the real world and crypto. The layer-one protocol replaces the traditional blockchain with a zero-knowledge proof, ensuring a super-light and constant sized chain that allows participants to quickly sync and verify the network. The entire chain is, and always will be, about 22kb — even as it scales. And SNARK-powered dApps, called Snapps, allow access to verified real world data from any website for on-chain use. The ecosystem is growing fast ahead of Mina's upcoming mainnet launch, with validators and community members in more than 120 countries. There are still opportunities to get involved at the ground level. Visit minaprotocol.com to find out more. Join the community at Mina’s free virtual Illuminate Summit on March 28th, visit illuminate.minaprotocol.com to secure your spot. *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 *Or directly here: * ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz ZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ DOT: 14zPzb7ihiBeaUn9jdPW9cHKGBd9qtTuJE75hhW2CvzLh6rT