zkMesh: February 2023 recap

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

zkMesh is produced by ZK Hack. 

We bring you 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!   

** Apply to ZK Hack Lisbon, our in-person ZK hackathon starting Mar. 31 **

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Research 

• Sangria: a Folding Scheme for PLONK by Nicolas Mohnblatt

• Some Practical Applications of Fully Homomorphic Encryption by Elisa Giurgea, Tudor Hutu, Emil Simion

• A Lower Bound on the Length of Signatures Based on Group Actions and Generic Isogenies by Dan Boneh, Jiaxin Guan, Mark Zhandry

• Fiat-Shamir Bulletproofs are Non-Malleable (in the Random Oracle Model) by Chaya Ganesh, Claudio Orlandi, Mahak Pancholi, Akira Takahashi, Daniel Tschudi

• Privacy-Preserving Tree-Based Inference with Fully Homomorphic Encryption by Jordan Frery, Andrei Stoian, Roman Bredehoft, Luis Montero, Celia Kherfallah, Benoit Chevallier-Mames, Arthur Meyre

• Towards Modular Foundations for Protocol Security by Lúcás Críostóir Meier

• Zero-Knowledge Elementary Databases with Function Queries by Xinxuan Zhang, Yi Deng

• The Tip5 Hash Function for Recursive STARKs by Alan Szepieniec, Alexander Lemmens, Jan Ferdinand Sauer, Bobbin Threadbare

• zkTree: a zk recursion tree with ZKP membership proofs by Sai Deng, Bo Du

• Proactive Refresh for Accountable Threshold Signatures by Dan Boneh, Aditi Partap, Lior Rotem

• Credible, Optimal Auctions via Blockchains by Kshitij Kulkarni, Matheus V. X. Ferreira, Tarun Chitra 

Articles

• Pairing-based Anonymous Credentials and the Power of Re-randomization | Decentralized Thoughts

• An Introduction to Zero-Knowledge Machine Learning (ZKML) | Worldcoin

• Why you should probably never sort your Merkle tree's leaves | Alin Tomescu 

• Champagne SuperNova, incrementally verifiable computation | Not a Monad Tutorial

• Everything you wanted to know about recursion and periodic constraints in STARKs but nobody told you | Not a Monad Tutorial

• Validity Rollups on Bitcoin | John Light

• MetaMask rolls out updates to privacy settings for new and existing users | Osato Avan-Nomayo | The Block

• Paper Speedrun: ZKBoo | Ying Tong | Geometry | 

• Introducing Spartan-ecdsa | Dan Tehrani  | PersonaeLabs

Videos/Podcast

• Delendum: STARKs via ECs with Eli, Dan and David

• Zero Knowledge Podcast: Episode 264: On-Chain Reputation & Identity Building with Sismo

• Zero Knowledge Podcast: Episode 265: Where ZK and ML intersect with Yi Sun and Daniel Kang

• Blockchain-Web3 MOOCs: ZKP Lecture 3: Programming ZKPs (Part 1)

ZK in a Tweetshell 

Alin Tomescu @alinush407

Did you ever hear about these fancy-shmancy elliptic curves with “pairings” or “bilinear maps”? Did you know *S*NARKs would not be possible without them? Or that jail time can be conducive to great mathematical results? If so, this blog post is for you: alinush.github.io/2022/12/31/pai…

Zero Knowledge Podcast @zeroknowledgefm

What should people know, or do research on, or read up on BEFORE they start learning about zk stuff ? @SuccinctJT offers some key resources to check in out in this clip with @AnnaRRose Full ep is here: zeroknowledge.fm/261-2/ (check out the shownotes for links he mentions!)

Guides and Resources

• A beginner's intro to coding zero-knowledge proofs | Santiago Palladino

• SuperNova | Jules Github

 Tools / implementations 

• https://github.com/hashcloak/starkjub 

• https://github.com/jules/supernova 

• https://github.com/personaelabs/spartan-ecdsa 

Project Updates

• RISC Zero zkVM: Scalable, Transparent Arguments of RISC-V Integrity | Bruestle, Gafni and RISC Zero Team

• Webb Protocol: A cross-chain private application and governance protocol | Drew Stone

• Polygon Exploring Use of ZK Technology for Main Chain, Co-Founder Bjelic Says | CoinDesk

• Introducing Sunscreen | Sunscreen

• Achieving a Critical Milestone with Deploy & Execute Launch | Aleo

• Open Sourcing HyperPlonk | Espresso Systems

• Announcing Devcon 7! | Ethereum Foundation

• Layer 2 Community Grants Winners | Ethereum Foundation

• FAQs: MoonMath Manual to zk-SNARKs | Least Authority 

• Mina Ecosystem Updates - Jan 2023 | Mina

• The Audit-Upgraded Testnet for Polygon zkEVM | Polygon

• To Ethereum, With Love: Announcing Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta on March 27th | Polygon

• Protecting Your Web3 Business: Why Separating Wallets is a Must | Starlight

• FROST Performance | ZFND

• Wrapping Up Cohort 2 of the zkApps Builders Program | o1Labs

• Announcing the Scroll Alpha Testnet on Goerli | Scroll

• Bonsai our Zero-Knowledge Proving Network | Risc0

Events/Hackathons

• SXSW Conference | Austin, USA. Mar 10-15

• Fast Software Encryption (FSE) | Beijing, China, Mar 20-24

• Paris Blockchain Week | Paris, France. Mar 20-24

• FHE.org | Tokyo. Mar 26 

• RWC 2023 | Tokyo. Mar 27-29

• ZK Hack Lisbon | Lisbon, Portugal. March 31-April 1 [Apply today!]

• zkSummit9 | Lisbon, Portugal. April 4 [Apply to join!]

• Financial Cryptography 2023 | Brač, Croatia. May 1-5

• ethdam | Amsterdam. May 20-21 

• Gateway to Cosmos Conference | Prague, Czech Rep. June 3-5

• EthCC | Paris, France. Jul 17-21

• Stanford Blockchain Conference | Stanford, USA. Aug 28-30

• DappCon | Berlin, Germany. Sept 11-13

• 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__!