zkMesh: Aug 2023 recap

Welcome to zkMesh, a monthly newsletter covering the latest in decentralized privacy-enhancing technologies, privacy protocol development, and zero knowledge systems research. 

zkMesh is produced by ZK Hack (shoutout to Flying Nobita for your help on this one!)

We include recent 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!   

** Looking to work in ZK? Keep an eye on the ZK jobs board this fall ** 

Research

• Unlocking the lookup singularity with Lasso by Srinath Setty, Justin Thaler and Riad Wahbyw

• Jolt: SNARKs for Virtual Machines via Lookups by Arasu Arun, Srinath Setty and Justin Thaler

• Arke: Scalable and Byzantine Fault Tolerant Privacy-Preserving Contact Discovery by Nicolas Mohnblatt, Alberto Sonnino, Kobi Gurkan and Philipp Jovanovic

• Snowblind: A Threshold Blind Signature in Pairing-Free Groups by Elizabeth Crites, Chelsea Komlo, Mary Maller, Stefano Tessaro and Chenzhi Zhu

• Fast batched asynchronous distributed key generation by Jens Groth and Victor Shoup

• CycleFold: Folding-scheme-based recursive arguments over a cycle of elliptic curves by Abhiram Kothapalli and Srinath Setty

• DualDory: Logarithmic-Verifier Linkable Ring Signatures through Preprocessing by Jonathan Bootle, Kaoutar Elkhiyaoui, Julia Hesse and Yacov Manevich

• Towards a Quantum-resistant Weak Verifiable Delay Function by Thomas Decru, Luciano Maino and Antonio Sanso

• Collaborative Privacy-Preserving Analysis of Oncological Data using Multiparty Homomorphic Encryption by Ravit Geva et al.

• Mutator Sets and their Application to Scalable Privacy by Alan Szepieniec and Thorkil Værge 

• The Specter (and Spectra) of Miner Extractable Value by Guillermo Angeris, Tarun Chitra, Theo Diamandis and Kshitij Kulkarni

• Post-Quantum Single Secret Leader Election (SSLE) From Publicly Re-randomizable Commitments by Dan Boneh, Aditi Partap and Lior Rotem

• A flexible Snark via the monomial basis by Steve Thakur

• On Soundness Notions for Interactive Oracle Proofs by Alexander R. Block, Albert Garreta, Pratyush Ranjan Tiwari and Michał Zając 

• Pianist: Scalable zkRollups via Fully Distributed Zero-Knowledge Proofs by Tianyi Liu, Tiancheng Xie, Jiaheng Zhang, Dawn Song and Yupeng Zhang

• Improving logarithmic derivative lookups using GKR by Shahar Papini and Ulrich Haböck

Articles And Threads

• An incomplete guide to Folding: Nova, Sangria, SuperNova, HyperNova, Protostar | Taiko Labs | Lisa A.

• The Lifecycle of a ZK Proof | ZKCamp | Preethi Kasireddy

• Approaching the 'lookup singularity': Introducing Lasso and Jolt | a16z crypto | Justin Thaler 

• The Hidden Little Secret in SnarkJS | Geometry | Kobi Gurkan 

• How I learn Zero Knowledge | coinmonks | Lauri Peltonen

• Mutator Sets | Neptune | Alan Szepieniec 

• Zero-Knowledge Range Proofs: Proving Where Your Secret Lies | Mysten Labs  

• Introduction to Nova and ZK Folding Schemes PART I: Recursive SNARKs and Incrementally Verifiable Computation | Veridise 

• From zkEVM's to privacy VM's | jaosef.eth

• Accelerating Client-Side ZK with WebGPU | Geometry | Koh Wei Jie

• Paper Speedrun: ProtoStar, Generic Efficient Accumulation/Folding for Special Sound Protocols | Geometry | Nicolas Mohnblatt 

• Inner Product Argument (IPA) and a Polynomial Commitment Scheme | LambdaClass 

• Solving LLM Privacy with FHE | Ingonyama 

Videos/Podcast

• Quantum Cryptography with Or Sattath | ZK Podcast

• Penumbra Catch Up with Finch, Erwan and Jen - ZK Podcast | ZK Podcast

• Exploring, Teaching and Auditing ZK with David Wong | ZK Podcast

• zkParis videos Playlist | Geometry and ZKValidator 

• zkStudyClub - Improving performance of non-native arithmetic in SNARKs | Ivo Kubjas, Consensys Gnark 

• zkStudyClub - Lasso/Jolt | Justin Thaler, Georgetown University/a16z

• Private markets on Ethereum - 0xPARC Pierre | PSE

• PSE Lectures: Ep 1 - Introduction to the course and Naive Set Theory Playlist | PSE

• The Magic of Zero-Knowledge Proofs | Ingonyama 

• ZK Movie | Ingonyama

Guides and Resources

• Educational Resources about Zero-Knowledge Proofs | ZKProof

• How to Build a SNARK that Is Out of This World | Nat Bunner

• Zcharts | zka.lc | Michele Orrù and George Kadianakis 

• zkSNARKs in a nutshell | Ethereum Foundation | Christian Reitwiessner

• User Guide: ZK Acceleration of Gnark using ICICLE | Ingonyama

• Diving Deeper into Blaze: NTT module | Ekaterina Broslavskaia 

Vulnerabilities/Disclosures

• Downfall Attacks 

• Double Public Key Signing Function Oracle Attack on ed25519-dalek | RUSTSEC

• ed25519-unsafe-libs - List of unsafe ed25519 signature libs | Mysten Labs 

• Things that use Ed25519 | IANIX

Tools / implementations  

• zk-Harness - Benchmarking framework for general purpose zero-knowledge proofs languages and libraries | zkCollective

• Valida - A STARK-based VM focused on code reuse, performance, and modularity | Max Gillett and Daniel Lubarov

• Native Nova SHA256 bench | Srinath Setty

• Shockwave+ | Personae Labs

• p0tion V1.0 Release | Privacy and Scaling Explorations

Project Updates

• Hello, again | Aleo 

• Noir Now Supports Visual Studio Code | Aztec Labs  

• NounsDAO Private Voting Final Update | Aztec Labs 

• Announcing Zeth: the first Type Zero zkEVM | RISC Zero

• Anoma is putting Graphs back into Crypto | Anoma 

• Introducing Polygon Chain Development Kit: Launch ZK L2s On Demand to Unlock Unified Liquidity | Polygon Labs

• Polygon ID is More than Biometric Proof of Personhood | Polygon Labs

• Least Authority Concludes Security Audit of Mina Protocol’s Transaction Logic and Transaction Pool | Mina

• Lambda Crypto Doctrine | LambdaClass 

• How to code FRI from scratch | LambdaClass 

• Open-Sourcing the Battle-Tested Stone Prover | by StarkWare

• Opening the Doppio Testnet to the Public | Espresso Systems

• Announcing Secret Ethereum | Secret Network Blog

• Placeholder proof system | =nil; Foundation

Events/Hackathons

• Korea Blockchain Week | Korea. Sept 5 - 6 

• CHES Prague | Czech Republic. Sept 10 - 14 

• DappCon | Berlin, Germany. Sept 11 - 13

• DeCompute 2023 | Singapore, Sept 12 - 13

• Protocol Berg | Berlin, Germany. Sept 15

• Axiom ZK Intensive Program | Virtual. Oct 18. Application deadline Sept 18

• zkSummit10 | London, Sept 20

• ETHGlobal NYC | NYC. Sept 22 - 23

• Cosmoverse 2023 | Istanbul, Oct 2 - 4 

• ZK Hack Istanbul | Istanbul, Nov 10 - 12 (Save the date)

• Devconnect  | Istanbul, Nov 13 - 19 

• ETHGlobal Istanbul | Istanbul, Nov 17 - 19

• DevCon | Southeast Asia. Spring 2024

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There you have it! Hope you liked this edition of zkMesh. Be sure to subscribe to get the next edition in your inbox.

Lastly, if you have something you think should be included in the next edition or suggestions for the format - tweet at us @__zkhack__!