zkMesh: Dec 2021 recap
Happy New Year and welcome to zkMesh! This is a monthly newsletter covering the latest in decentralized privacy-enhancing technologies, privacy protocol development, and zero knowledge systems research.
Update for the newsletter: After 2 awesome years, Mikerah & Yahsin will be stepping away from the zkMesh project due to time constraints. Want to share a big thank you to both of them for the work we did together! Moving forward, zkMesh will be produced by the Zero Knowledge Podcast & ZK Hack.
ZK Mesh includes links to research, useful articles, videos, podcasts, tweets, tools, project updates, and events. Expect a new edition at the beginning of every month and be sure to share and subscribe!
Here is what we found for December 2021:
Research
SNARKBlock: Federated Anonymous Blocklisting from Hidden Common Input Aggregate Proofs by Michael Rosenberg and Mary Maller and Ian Miers
Low-Bandwidth Threshold ECDSA via Pseudorandom Correlation Generators by Damiano Abram and Ariel Nof and Claudio Orlandi and Peter Scholl and Omer Shlomovits
Alpha-Rays: Key Extraction Attacks on Threshold ECDSA Implementations by Dmytro Tymokhanov and Omer Shlomovits
A compiler for multi-key homomorphic signatures for Turing machines by Somayeh Dolatnezhad Samarin and Dario Fiore and Daniele Venturi and Morteza Amini
Succinct Zero-Knowledge Batch Proofs for Set Accumulators by Matteo Campanelli and Dario Fiore and Semin Han and Jihye Kim and Dimitris Kolonelos and Hyunok Oh
Efficient and Post-Quantum Zero-Knowledge Proofs for Blockchain Confidential Transaction Protocols by Shang GAO and Tianyu ZHENG and Yu GUO and Bin XIAO
Zero-Knowledge for Homomorphic Key-Value Commitments with Applications to Privacy-Preserving Ledgers by Matteo Campanelli and Felix Engelmann and Claudio Orlandi
Faster PLONK verification for Halo-like PCD - HackMD by Sean Bowe
Are We There Yet? Timing and Floating-Point Attacks on Differential Privacy Systems by Jiankai Jin, Eleanor McMurtry, Benjamin I. P. Rubinstein, Olga Ohrimenko
One Bad Apple Spoils the Bunch: Transaction DoS in MimbleWimble Blockchains by Seyed Ali Tabatabaee, Charlene Nicer, Ivan Beschastnikh, Chen Feng
Quantum Merkle Trees by Lijie Chen, Ramis Movassagh
An Obfuscating C Compiler for Encrypted Computing by Peter Breuer
“They're not that hard to mitigate”: What Cryptographic Library Developers Think About Timing Attacks by Jan Jancar and Marcel Fourné and Daniel De Almeida Braga and Mohamed Sabt and Peter Schwabe and Gilles Barthe and Pierre-Alain Fouque and Yasemin Acar
Articles
A Succinct Story of Zero Knowledge | dust-nib
Endgame | Vitalik.ca
Hash Functions in Plonkup | Anoma | Joshua Fitzgerald
An Introduction to zk-SNARK: Plonkup | Anoma | Alexander Miles
Polygon Spends $400M to Scale Ethereum–With ETH2 Around the Corner | Decrypt | Jeff Benson
Redefining Scalability | StarkWare
CIA Confirms the Rumors: It Really Is Working on Cryptocurrency Projects | Decrypt | Jeff Benson
This Monero Malware Is Targeting Enterprise Networks | Decrypt | Jason Nelson
Videos/Podcast
ZK Podcast: The Road to STARKs and Miden with Bobbin Threadbare
ZK HACK #6 - Aleo Workshop Part 1, Deriving value from zkSNARKs: an example with ZEXE
Blockchain Security in a TweetShell
Vulnerabilities/Audits
Project Zero: This shouldn't have happened: A vulnerability postmortem by Tavis Ormandy
Griphook: Uncovering a Critical Vulnerability in Bitclout by Zengo Blog
“Alpha-Rays” behind the scenes - HackMD by Omer Shlomovits
Polygon Lack Of Balance Check Bugfix Postmortem — $2.2m Bounty
StarkEx Audit by PeckShield
Guides and Resources
Project Updates
Aleo Community: 2021 Year in Review | Aleo | Anthony DiPrinzio
Private DeFi with the Aztec Connect Bridge | Aztec Network | Jon Wu
Introducing Aztec Grants: Funding a Community-Led Privacy Ecosystem | Aztec Network
Dark Forest Holiday Development Update | Dark Forest Team
Aleo Token Economics | Aleo | Alex Pruden
Happy New Year and a Recap of 2021 | Firo | Reuben Yap
HEZ Token Delisting | Polygon Hermez
Horizen's Cross-Chain Protocol Zendoo Is Live On Mainnet! | Horizen
Introducing: L2 Counterfactual Wallet and FIAT on-ramps | Loopring Protocol | Adam Browman
Snapps Workshop & Bootcamp Retro | Mina Protocol
Introducing Mysterium 2.0, the Evolution into an Ecosystem | savannah655
Oasis 2021 Year in Review | Oasis Protocol Foundation
Fractal Scaling: From L2 to L3. It's layers all the way down | StarkWare
Tornado Cash Introduces Arbitrary Amounts & Shielded Transfers | Tornado Cash
Zcon3: Call For Speakers | Zcash Foundation
Events/Hackathons
ZKValidator presents Privacy on Cosmos: Scalability edition Virtual. Jan 13, 2022
Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2022 Virtual. February 14-18, 2022
ZK Hack Mini Virtual. March 1-16, 2022. Signup to be notified when schedule is live
ETHBarcelona Barcelona. Early April 2022
Real World Crypto 2022 [POSTPONED to APRIL] Amsterdam / Virtual. April 13–15, 2022
Paris Blockchain Week Paris. April 13-14, 2022
ETHAmsterdam Amsterdam. April 22-24, 2022
The Science of Blockchain Conference 2022 (SBC'22) [POSTPONED to August] Stanford.
Jobs:
ZK Jobs Board - open jobs from top zk hiring teams!
————
There you have it! Hope you liked this edition of zkMesh. Be sure to subscribe to get the next edition in your inbox.
Also, if you have something you think should be included in the next edition or something you think we should do differently with the format - tweet at us @zeroknowledgefm!