zkMesh: Jan 2021 recap
Welcome to zkMesh - a monthly newsletter about the latest in decentralised privacy-preserving technologies, privacy protocol development and zero knowledge systems research.
zkMesh is put together by Mikerah (HashCloak) and Anna (Zero Knowledge Podcast, zkSummit).
We include links to the latest 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 subscribe!
———
Research
Unifying Compilers for SNARKs, SMT, and More by Alex Ozdemir and Fraser Brown and Riad S. Wahby
Linear-time zero-knowledge SNARKs for R1CS by Jonathan Lee and Srinath Setty and Justin Thaler and Riad Wahby
Experimental relativistic zero-knowledge proofs by Pouriya Alikhani and Nicolas Brunner and Claude Crépeau and Sébastien Designolle and Raphaël Houlmann and Weixu Shi and Hugo Zbinden
The Cryptographic Complexity of Anonymous Coins: A Systematic Exploration by Niluka Amarasinghe and Xavier Boyen and Matthew McKague
Streaming Merkle Proofs within Binary Numeral Trees by Luke Champine
Aggregatable Distributed Key Generation by Kobi Gurkan and Philipp Jovanovic and Mary Maller and Sarah Meiklejohn and Gilad Stern and Alin Tomescu
MERCAT: Mediated, Encrypted, Reversible, SeCure Asset Transfers by Aram Jivanyan and Jesse Lancaster, with the assistance of Arash Afshar and Parnian Alimi
QuickSilver: Efficient and Affordable Zero-Knowledge Proofs for Circuits and Polynomials over Any Field by Kang Yang and Pratik Sarkar and Chenkai Weng and Xiao Wang
Fuzzy Message Detection by Gabrielle Beck and Julia Len and Ian Miers and Matthew Green
Atomic Swaps between Bitcoin and Monero by Philipp Hoenisch and Lucas Soriano del Pino
Benchmarking pairing-friendly elliptic curves libraries by Youssef El Housni
ZEN: Efficient Zero-Knowledge Proofs for Neural Networks by Boyuan Feng and Lianke Qinand Zhenfei Zhang , Yufei Ding , and Shumo Chu
A blockchain-based pattern for confidential and pseudo-anonymous contract enforcement by Nicolas Six, Claudia Negri Ribalta, Nicolas Herbaut and Camille Salinesi
Articles
Kicking off 2021 with Zero Knowledge by Anna Rose
On the Road to StarkNet: A Permissionless STARK-Powered L2 ZK-Rollup | StarkWare
Litecoin Is Getting Closer to Adding MimbleWimble's Privacy Features | Decrypt.co
How Bitcoin Privacy Wallet Wasabi Withstood an Attack on Tor | Decrypt.co
An approximate introduction to how zk-SNARKs are possible by Vitalik Buterin
Threshold ECDSA in practice by Jean-Phillipe Aumasson
Zero Knowledge Cryptography & the Next Digital Revolution by Alex Pruden
The Double-Edged Sword of Decentralization by Anna Rose
Videos/Podcast/Newsletters
Blockchain Privacy in a TweetShell
Tools
https://github.com/zeropoolnetwork/libzeropool/blob/master/src/circuit/tx.rs
https://github.com/matter-labs/recursive_aggregation_circuit
Guides and Resources
Attacks and Vulnerabilities
Project Updates
Polaris v1.0. The “Faithful Prover” Rollup Licence by Thomas Walton-Pocock | Aztec
Recursive proofs on Mir by Brendan Farmer, Daniel Lubarov & William Borgeaud.
Investing in your first Tinlake Pool: How to DYOR by Dylan Dedi | Centrifuge
LRC Tokenomics v2. by Matthew Finestone | Loopring
Testnet 2.0 is here - Ready for your all-crypto VPN? | Mysterium
What are we actually giving up when we lose our privacy? by Neta Cohen | Qedit
On the Road to StarkNet: A Permissionless STARK-Powered L2 ZK-Rollup | StarkWare
Zcash Community Call: Our Thoughts on Halo | Zcash foundation
Can Zcash Scale to a Million Users? by Teor | Zcash Foundation
Events/Hackathons/TrustedSetups
Plumo Setup ceremony - Signup to participate. Happening now!
Privacy Enhancing Technologies in Practice - Series of Short Workshops Ongoing
The 11th BIU Winter School on Cryptography February 14-17, 2021
zkSessions #1 DeFi & Privacy - FREE - Feb 15, 2021
The 4TH ZKPROOF workshop Home edition: CFP open now. April 19 - 29 2021
Jobs:
Zero Knowledge Podcast is looking for an experienced producer for the show. This role requires strong knowledge of the blockchain and zk space. The work would include researching the topics for show, prepping episode sheets, scheduling, and shownotes. Get in touch at hello[at]zeroknowledge.fm.
Zero Knowledge Blog is looking for blog contributors - reach out to Anna or Alex Pruden via the zkPodcast telegram group if you are interested or email at hello[at]zeroknowledge.fm
Note: If you have an open job position and would like to have us include it in our next edition get in touch!
————
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!