zkMesh: Mar 2024 recap

Welcome to zkMesh, a monthly newsletter covering the latest in advanced privacy-enhancing cryptography, distributed 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 every month. Be sure to share and subscribe!

** ZK Hack Kraków is happening May 17 - 19 (APPLY TO JOIN US)**

Research

• Reckle Trees: Updatable Merkle Batch Proofs with Applications by Charalampos Papamanthou, Shravan Srinivasan, Nicolas Gailly ,Ismael Hishon-Rezaizadeh, Andrus Salumets and Stjepan Golemac

• Accumulation Without Homomorphism by Benedikt Bünz, Pratyush Mishra, Wilson Nguyen and William Wang

• Perfect Zero-Knowledge PCPs for #P by Tom Gur, Jack O'Connor and Nicholas Spooner

• Perfect Asynchronous MPC with Linear Communication Overhead by Ittai Abraham, Gilad Asharov, Shravani Patil and Arpita Patra

• SoK: Zero-Knowledge Range Proofs by Miranda Christ, Foteini Baldimtsi, Konstantinos Kryptos Chalkias, Deepak Maram, Arnab Roy and Joy Wang

• Mangrove: A Scalable Framework for Folding-based SNARKs by Wilson Nguyen, Trisha Datta, Binyi Chen, Nirvan Tyagi and Dan Boneh

• Exponent-VRFs and Their Applications by Dan Boneh, Iftach Haitner and Yehuda Lindell

• STIR: Reed–Solomon Proximity Testing with Fewer Queries by Gal Arnon, Alessandro Chiesa, Giacomo Fenzi and Eylon Yogev

• Parallel Zero-knowledge Virtual Machine by Wenqing Hu, Tianyi Liu, Ye Zhang, Yuncong Zhang and Zhenfei Zhang

• Extractable Witness Encryption for KZG Commitments and Efficient Laconic OT by Nils Fleischhacker, Mathias Hall-Andersen and Mark Simkin

• Constant-Size zk-SNARKs in ROM from Falsifiable Assumptions by Helger Lipmaa, Roberto Parisella and Janno Siim

• Watermarkable and Zero-Knowledge Verifiable Delay Functions from any Proof of Exponentiation by Charlotte Hoffmann and Krzysztof Pietrzak

• Studying Lattice-Based Zero-Knowlege Proofs: A Tutorial and an Implementation of Lantern by Lena Heimberger, Florian Lugstein and Christian Rechberger

• Tight ZK CPU: Batched ZK Branching with Cost Proportional to Evaluated Instruction by Yibin Yang, David Heath, Carmit Hazay, Vladimir Kolesnikov and Muthuramakrishnan Venkitasubramaniam

• An Optimization of the Addition Gate Count in Plonkish Circuits by Steve Thakur

Articles/Threads

• On Trust Infrastructure | @_ArnaudS_ (Arnaud Schenk)

• Greco, A zk-FHE Library | @backaes (Enrico Bottazzi)

• Privacy Focussed DEXs and Building It on Aztec - The Flashbots Collective | @omw_to_the_moon (Rahul Kothari)

• Why I’m Excited by Circle STARK and Stwo | @EliBenSasson (Eli Ben Sasson)

• Plonk's Permutation, The Definitive Explanation | @cryptodavidw (David Wong)

• How Does Zcash Work? | Zellic

• Regeneration: A Manifesto for an Autonomous Future | Aztec

• Vertical Integration in the Zero-Knowledge Proof Value Chain | Cherry Crypto

• Notes on Efficient Polynomial Commitment Schemes and Fflonk | @rishotics (Rishabh Gupta)

• Client-side Proof Generation | Aztec

• Habemus Verifier | Neptune

• Cryptographic Fog of War | Ingonyama

• Don’t Trust, Verify: An Overview of Decentralized Inference | Dragonfly Research

• Why the $1.2 BN Trial of Tornado Cash Dev Alexey Pertsev Will Decide the Future of Crypto Privacy | DL News 

• Why a Privacy Protocol Can't Work Without Native AA | @CatMcGeeCode (Cat McGee)

Videos/Podcast

• ZK Hack Ecosystem and Winners of ZK Hack IV | Zero Knowledge Podcast

• Succinct's Platform, Prover Network and SP1 | Zero Knowledge Podcast

• ZK Debate: Key Chokepoints to Focus for ZK Adoption | ZPrize

• BabySpartan: Lasso-based SNARK for Non-uniform Computation | Privacy & Scaling Explorations

• Lightweight Attestation of Web2 Data via Interactive Zero-Knowledge Proofs and More | Privacy & Scaling Explorations

• Getting Started with RISC Zero | RISC Zero

Guides and Resources

• Various Range Proof Implementations for 64 and 32 Bit Ranges and Their Benchmarks in Rust | Mysten Labs

• Spreadsheet With Concrete Examples to Make Sense of the Mechanics for Permutation Arguments, Lookup Arguments, and Range Checks | @Paul_Gafni (Paul Gafni)

• A ZK Hacker Guide: Analysis of Leading ZKML Frameworks on Neural Networks | @Thomas_Zjc (Thomas Zhang)

• Sumcheck 201 (Chapter 2) | Ingonyama

• Proof Aggregation Techniques | LambdaClass Blog

Vulnerabilities/Disclosures

• Polygon zkEVM Mainnnet Beta Faced an Issue With Its Sequencer | Polygon zkEVM

• CLSAG Security Proof Revisions | Monero

• Sepolia Incident | Ethereum Foundation

Tools / implementations

• M31 and BabyBear Field Arithmetic in Bitcoin Script | BitVM

• Zk-KYC Demonstration Application | RISC Zero

• A CLI Tool for Client-Side Proving of Zero Knowledge Proofs | Mopro

• zkML for =nil; Proof-Market | TACEO

• PoC: Verify Plonky3 STARK Proofs in a Plonky2 SNARK | QED Protocol

Project Updates

• We Will Be Hiring About 200 Interns in 2024 | Nethermind

• Beyond Single-Core: Enhancing VM Efficiency in Parallel Environments | LambdaClass

• Introducing NEBRA Labs | NEBRA Labs

• Lagrange Labs, Ether.fi Reach $500M Restaking Agreement To Secure Parallel ZK Coprocessing on Ethereum | Lagrange Labs

• Worldcoin Foundation Open Sources Core Components of the Orb’s Software | Worldcoin

• The World’s 1st On-Chain LLM | Modulus Labs

• Revolutionizing the Web 3.0 UX With ZKML Powered by Trusta and Brevis | Brevis

• RISC Zero zkVM v0.21 Release Notes | RISC Zero

• Unleashing the Power of the Stone Prover | Starkware

• SP1 v0.0.2 Release Notes | Succinct Labs

• The Avail Vision: Accelerating the Unification of Web3 | Avail

• Zero Knowledge Systems You Can Trust | Rei Labs

• Product Update: ICICLE V1.6.0 | Ingonyama

• NovaNet: Incentivizing Zero Knowledge Proofs Everywhere | Novanet

• Announcing Rollup Coprocessing on AltLayer with Lagrange’s Parallel Prover | Lagrange Labs

• IMO: Initial Model Offering | ORA

• The Gevulot Devnet is LIVE | Gevulot

• Upgrade Mechanism Testing Retrospective | Mina Protocol

• zkVM Performance Upgrades Roadmap | RISC Zero

• Product Announcement: Aleo IP Core | Ingonyama

• BitVM 2: Permissionless Verification on Bitcoin | BitVM

Events/Hackathons

• zkSummit11 | Athens, Greece. Apr 10

• ZK Accelerate | Athens, Greece. Apr 11

• EuroSys 2024 | Athens, Greece. Apr 22 - 25

• ETHGlobal Sydney | Sydney, Australia. May 3 - 5

• ZK Hack Kraków | Kraków, Poland. May 17 - 19

• DappCon 2024 | Berlin, Germany. May 21 - 23

• ZKProof 6 | Berlin, Germany. May 22 - 24

• ETHBerlin | Berlin, Germany. May 24 - 26

• Eurocrypt 2024 | Zurich, Switzerland. May 26 - 30

• ETH Prague | Prague, Czech Republic. May 31 - June 2

• EthCC |  | Brussels, Belgium. July 8 - 11

• ETHGlobal Brussels | Brussels, Belgium. July 12 - 14

• ZK Hack Montréal (tbc) | Aug 9 - 11 (SAVE THE DATE)

• ETHGlobal Singapore | Singapore. September 20 - 22

• ETHGlobal San Francisco | San Francisco, US. October 18 - 20

• DevCon | Bangkok, Thailand. November 12 - 15

• ETHGlobal Bangkok | Bangkok, Thailand. November 15 - 17

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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 @__zkhack__!