ZK Mesh: November 2024 Recap

Welcome to ZK Mesh, a monthly newsletter covering the latest in advanced privacy-enhancing cryptography, distributed protocol development, and zero-knowledge systems research.

ZK Mesh is produced by ZK Hack.

We bring you recent research, useful articles, videos, podcasts, tweets, tools, project updates, and events. Expect a new edition every month. Be sure to share and subscribe!

Research

• Zero-Knowledge Location Privacy Via Accurate Floating-Point SNARKs | Jens Ernstberger, Chengru Zhang, Luca Ciprian, Philipp Jovanovic and Sebastian Steinhorst

• Verifying Jolt zkVM Lookup Semantics | Carl Kwan, Quang Dao and Justin Thaler

• New Bears at the Bear Market: Introducing Polar Bear and Teddy Bear Prime Fields | Tomer Solberg

• Field-Agnostic SNARKs From Expand-Accumulate Codes | Alexander R. Block, Zhiyong Fang, Jonathan Katz, Justin Thaler, Hendrik Waldner and Yupeng Zhang

• Zkmarket : Privacy-preserving Digital Data Trade System Via Blockchain | Seungwoo Kim, Semin Han, Seongho Park, Kyeongtae Lee, Jihye Kim and Hyunok Oh

• Siniel: Distributed Privacy-Preserving zkSNARK | Yunbo Yang, Yuejia Cheng, Kailun Wang, Xiaoguo Li, Jianfei Sun, Jiachen Shen, Xiaolei Dong, Zhenfu Cao, Guomin Yang and Robert H. Deng

• AMAZE: Accelerated MiMC Hardware Architecture for Zero-Knowledge Applications on the Edge | Anees Ahmed, Nojan Sheybani, Davi Moreno, Nges Brian Njungle, Tengkai Gong, Michel Kinsy and Farinaz Koushanfar

• Hybrid Zero-Knowledge From Garbled Circuits | Masayuki Abe, Miguel Ambrona and Miyako Ohkubo

• OPTIMSM: FPGA Hardware Accelerator for Zero-Knowledge MSM | Xander Pottier, Thomas de Ruijter, Jonas Bertels, Wouter Legiest, Michiel Van Beirendonck and Ingrid Verbauwhede

• BrakingBase - a Linear Prover, Poly-logarithmic Verifier, Field Agnostic Polynomial Commitment Scheme | Vineet Nair, Ashish Sharma and Bhargav Thankey

• Khatam: Reducing the Communication Complexity of Code-Based SNARKs | Hadas Zeilberger

• Linear Proximity Gap for Reed-Solomon Codes within the 1.5 Johnson Bound | Yiwen Gao, Haibin Kan and Yuan Li

• The LaZer Library: Lattice-Based Zero Knowledge and Succinct Proofs for Quantum-Safe Privacy | Vadim Lyubashevsky, Gregor Seiler and Patrick Steuer

• A Zero-Knowledge PCP Theorem | Tom Gur, Jack O'Connor and Nicholas Spooner

• Lova: A Novel Framework for Verifying Mathematical Proofs With Incrementally Verifiable Computation | Noel Elias

• BatchZK: A Fully Pipelined GPU-Accelerated System for Batch Generation of Zero-Knowledge Proofs | Tao Lu, Yuxun Chen, Zonghui Wang, Xiaohang Wang, Wenzhi Chen and Jiaheng Zhang

• Cirrus: Performant and Accountable Distributed SNARK | Wenhao Wang, Fangyan Shi, Dani Vilardell and Fan Zhang

• Practical Zero-Knowledge PIOP for Public Key and Ciphertext Generation In (Multi-Group) Homomorphic Encryption | Intak Hwang, Hyeonbum Lee, Jinyeong Seo and Yongsoo Song

• ZK-SNARKs for Ballot Validity: A Feasibility Study | Nicolas Huber, Ralf Kuesters, Julian Liedtke and Daniel Rausch

• Opening the Blackbox: Collision Attacks On Round-Reduced Tip5, Tip4, Tip4' and Monolith | Fukang Liu, Katharina Koschatko, Lorenzo Grassi, Hailun Yan, Shiyao Chen, Subhadeep Banik and Willi Meier

• Orion's Ascent: Accelerating Hash-Based Zero Knowledge Proof On Hardware Platforms | Florian Hirner, Florian Krieger, Constantin Piber and Sujoy Sinha Roy

• On Witness Encryption and Laconic Zero-Knowledge Arguments | Yanyi Liu, Noam Mazor and Rafael Pass

• Algebraic Zero Knowledge Contingent Payment | Javier Gomez-Martinez, Dimitrios Vasilopoulos, Pedro Moreno-Sanchez and Dario Fiore

Articles/Threads

• NIST IR 8547 Initial Public Draft, Transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography Standards | NIST

• Court Overturns US Sanctions Against Cryptocurrency Mixer Tornado Cash | Reuters

• 10 Must-Read Papers That Shaped Modern Zero-Knowledge Proofs | zkSecurity

• Getting The Bugs Out of SNARKs: The Road Ahead | a16zc crypto

• The Surprising Efficiency of Honest-Majority MPC for coSNARKs | TACEO

• 9 + 1 Open Problems In The Privacy Space | Equilibrium

• Benefits of EOF (EVM Object Format) for Zero Knowledge Proofs | Succinct

• Web Proof Techniques: Origo Mode | Pluto

• Sampling for Proximity and Availability | Bain Capital Crypto

• ZNARKs: SNARKs for The Integers | zkSecurity

• ZK Hack - Let's Hash It Out - WriteUp | 0xhashiman

• Consensus Where it Counts: Rethinking Base Layers for the ZK Era | bedlam

• ZK Hardware Architecture Is Weird | Lauri Peltonen

• zkVM Security: What Could Go Wrong? | zkSecurity

• Reflections and Insights Post-Devcon | Yanis Meziane

• Split Gröbner Bases for Satisfiability Modulo Finite Fields | Veridise

• Devcon Key Insight: Indistinguishability Obfuscation | Leku

• How Fast We Can Go: Proving Million Keccak Function Per Second | Cysic

• A Gentle Introduction to Functional Encryption | Leku

Videos/Podcasts

• ZK Whiteboard Sessions Season 2 | ZK Hack

• Episode 345: Latest ZK Research with Dan Boneh | Zero Knowledge Podcast

• SNARGs Book Study Group | ZK Hack

• Sum-Check 101 | Ingonyama

• Formal Methods for Zero Knowledge Circuits | a16z crypto

• 10x Faster Sumcheck over Binary Tower Fields | Ingonyama

Guides and Resources

• The Map of ZK | ZKV

• Halo Hero Book - A Course on Halo2 Development | zkSecurity x Zircuit

• Empirical Study of Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) Languages | Arman Kolozyan

Vulnerabilities/Disclosures

• Improving the Security of the Jolt zkVM | zkSecurity

Tools/Implementations

• Binius Models | Irreducible

• Any zkVM: Rust Template | @Matteo_Mer

• Tornado Cash as a foundry project, using latest versions of tools such as Circom, snarkJS, etc. | Jeff Security

Project Updates

• ICICLE V3.1: More Passion, More Energy, More ZK Performance | Ingonyama

• Introducing Espresso Confirmations | Espresso Systems

• Enter Stage Left: Private Shared State | TACEO

• Announcing Veridise AuditHub: Comprehensive Audit Platform | Veridise

• Gevulot Announces the ZkBoost Consortium's Founding Governing Council | Gevulot

• SpaZK: 100X Faster Verifiable AI Powered By Cross-stack ZKML Optimization | Brevis

• Kailua: How it Works | RISC Zero

• Taiko Secures Its Based Rollup With ZK Proofs | Taiko

• noname 3.0: Native Hints, Standard Library, Compiler Visualizer, and More! | zkSecurity

• Boundless: Road to Mainnet | RISC Zero

• Introducing DeData Networks | ZKsync

• Road to Mainnet By Orkun Kilic | Citrea

• State of the Proving Infrastructure Landscape - 2024Q3 | Gevulot

• Ethereum Beam Chain: FAQ to Unpack the Big DevCon Announcement | Polygon

• CoSnarks In Action at Devcon7 | TACEO

• Scaling Eigenlayer’s Security: How Boundless Makes Slashing Possible | RISC Zero x Eigenlayer

• STOs and Real-World Assets on Mina | Mina

• Jolt: An update | a16z crypto

• Polygon Miden Alpha Testnet V5 Is Live | Polygon

• Cycles Protocol: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Clearing System | Cycles

• Proof Composability on Hylé | Hylé

Events/Hackathons

• ZK Hack V | Online. November 26 - December 17, 2024

• ETHIndia | Bengaluru, India. December 6 - 8, 2024

• ETHDenver | Denver, US. February 23 - March 2, 2025

• ZKProof 7 | Sofia, Bulgaria. March 23 - 25, 2025

• Real World Crypto | Sofia, Bulgaria. March 26 - 28, 2025

• ETHGlobal Taipei | Taipei, Taiwan. April 4 - 6, 2025

• BUIDL Asia | Seoul, South Korea. April 9 - 10, 2025

• zkSummit 13 | Toronto. May 2025 (date tbc)

• ETHGlobal Prague | Prague, Czech Republic. May 20 - June 1, 2025

• ETHCC | Cannes, France. June 30 - July 3, 2025

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