zkMesh: Jan 2022 recap

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

zkMesh is produced by the Zero Knowledge Podcast & ZK Hack. 

It 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!   

** Quick Note: ZK Hack Mini is happening March 1-15. Join us once again for puzzle hacking and workshops! **

Research 

• PlonKup: Reconciling PlonK with plookup by Luke Pearson, Joshua Fitzgerald, Héctor Masip, Marta Bellés-Muñoz, and Jose Luis Muñoz-Tapia

• Introducing Plonky2 by Brendan Farmer

• Publicly verifiable anonymous tokens with private metadata bit by Fabrice Benhamouda and Tancrède Lepoint and Michele Orrù and Mariana Raykova

• Subgroup membership testing on elliptic curves via the Tate pairing 1 Introduction by Dmitrii Koshelev

• Memory in Miden VM by Bobbin Threadbare

• Babylon: Reusing Bitcoin Mining to Enhance Proof-of-Stake Security by Ertem Nusret Tas, Fisher Yu, David Tse and Sreeram Kannan

• Speeding Dumbo: Pushing Asynchronous BFT Closer to Practice by Bingyong Guo and Yuan Lu and Zhenliang Lu and Qiang Tang and Jing Xu and Zhenfeng Zhang

• CRYScanner: Finding cryptographic libraries misuse by Amit Choudhari and Sylvain Guilley and Khaled Karray

• Non-Interactive Zero-Knowledge Proofs to Multiple Verifiers by Kang Yang and Xiao Wang

• Feta: Efficient Threshold Designated-Verifier Zero-Knowledge Proofs by Carsten Baum and Robin Jadoul and Emmanuela Orsini and Peter Scholl and Nigel P. Smart

• On How Zero-Knowledge Proof Blockchain Mixers Improve, and Worsen User Privacy by Zhipeng Wang and Stefanos Chaliasos and Kaihua Qin and Liyi Zhou and Lifeng Gao and Pascal Berrang and Ben Livshits and Arthur Gervais

Articles

• Group Signatures with zkSNARKs | 0xPARC | Joel G, Matt Katz, Uma R, Kevin Z, Raymond Z, and gubsheep  

• ZK Identity: Why and How (Part 1) | 0xPARC

• Recursive ZK-SNARKs: Improving Tornado Cash Security and Note Management | Killari

• Zero Knowledge Lottery | Killari

• A Technical Introduction to MACI 1.0 | Privacy & Scaling Explorations | Kyle Charbonnet 

• The Trojan Horse of Privacy | Coindesk | Dan Jeffries 

• 4 Projects Championing Privacy in Blockchain | ZKV | Hector Perez

• Etherescan adds new messaging feature for anons: 'Blockscan Chat' | Cointelegraph | Brian Quarmby

• 4 Reasons Privacy Coins Haven't Taken Off | Coindesk | Haseeb Qureshi

Videos/Podcast

• Wired Magazine: Computer Scientist Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty

• Zero Knowledge Series: a list of zk-focused episodes from the ZK Podcast 

• Zero Knowledge Podcast EP 213: zk-SNARKs meets Optimistic Rollup with Zkopru

• Videos from recent event at The BIU Research Center on Applied Cryptography and Cyber Security

• The Riemann Hypothesis, Explained from Quanta Magazine

ZK in a TweetShell 

tomaka @tomaka17

Zero knowledge proof explanations be like: Part 1: Alice asks Bob "did I switch the two balls?", and by answering correctly Bob can prove that he can distinguish them. Part 2: Bob then uses finite fields, combines polynomials for erasure coding, and builds the Merkle root

Pratyush Mishra @zkproofs

Cool idea for recursive SNARK chains like Mina and PolygonZero: augment the existing recursive circuits to additionally implement a VDF, thus obtaining an arrow-of-time and reducing subjectivity issues, basically for free

Vulnerabilities/Audits

• Critical privacy vulnerability — getting exposed by MetaMask  | Alex Lupascu

• Under-constrained computation, a new kind of bug | ConsenSys Diligence

Guides and Resources

• www.zkrollups.xyz

• Hash Bounties

• An Introduction to Secret-Sharing-Based Secure Multiparty Computation 

Tools 

• Plonky2

• A cairo implementation of NIST P-256

• Semaphore 

• ZKP Private Airdrop 

Funding ZK

• zkDAO Official Soft Proposal: BitDAO’s $200M zkDAO to advance Ethereum scaling via zkSync

• Aztec Network Grants Applications open

• Harmony’s $10M zkDAO

• The Polygon Thesis: Strategic Focus on ZK Technology as the Next Major Chapter for Polygon; $1B Treasury Allocation | Polygon Blog 

• (Coming soon) ZPrize: a bounty program for improving general prover performance

Project Updates

• Anoma Blog: An Introduction to zk-SNARK: Plonkup | Alexander Miles

• Releasing the Initial Polygon Hermez 2.0 zkEVM Documentation | Polygon Hermez

• Announcing Dactylobiotus: The Developer Preview Release of Juvix | Metastate Team

• A New Zero-Knowledge Smart Contract that Verifies Trade Profit Percentage, Proof of Alpha — Snapp in Development Now | Mina Protocol

• Nym now supports smart contracts | Nym

• Proposal: Creation of Polkadot Pioneers Prize, an Incentive Prize Program 

• Testnet #4: Shielded Staking Is Here | Penumbra

• Projects Building on StarkNet | StarkWare 

• Tornado Cash Has Been Deployed on Optimism | Tornado Cash

• Welcoming the new ZOMG Committee | The Zcash Foundation

• On Managing Secure Upgradability | Matter Labs

• How Profila Uses Cardano to Give You Control Over Your Personal Data | Michiel Van Roey 

Events/Hackathons

• Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2022 Virtual. February 14-18

• ZK Hack Mini Virtual. March 1-16

• Protocol Labs Research Seminar Series Virtual. Ongoing

• Real World Crypto 2022 Amsterdam / Virtual. April 13–15

• Paris Blockchain Week Paris. April 13-14

• zkSummit returns for our 7th edition! Amsterdam. April 21. Apply to attend or speak here

• ETHAmsterdam Amsterdam. April 22-24

• Summer School on Real-World Crypto and Privacy Šibenik, Croatia. June 13-17

• EthCC Paris. July 19-21

• The Science of Blockchain Conference 2022 (SBC'22) Stanford. Aug 29-Sep 2

Jobs: 

• O(1) Labs is looking for a motivated Cryptography Engineer with a strong software background, capable of designing and implementing cryptographic protocols. Apply here

• ZK Jobs Board - open jobs from ZK Teams

Note: If you have an open job position and would like to have us include it in our next edition, get in touch!

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