Episode 347 - Back to the Future with Zero Knowledge

Transcript

[Music] welcome to zero knowledge I'm your host Anna Rose in this podcast we will be exploring the latest in zero knowledge research and the decentralized web as well as new paradigms that promise to change the way we interact and transact [Music] online this week I share a story that I've been meaning to tell on the air for a long time it's a story about coincidences involving this show and the name zero knowledge and I feel like it's a really good time to share with you this is also kind of officially my first

episode back after our three-month Hiatus I have really missed doing this part of my job I feel a little bit out of the loop but also more clear-headed like very ready to Adventure into a new frontier things are changing now now so fast it's going to be hard to keep up but hopefully at least in our little ZK corner of the world we're going to be able to map out what's happening this particular episode will be quite different from our usual interviews it's just going to be me talking to you next week I'll be rejoined by Nico and some guests in a more familiar format but I thought as a return episode I would try something a little bit different before I jump into this I just wanted to share

a couple updates from the ZK podast podcast so first off we have a new website and a new jingle it was time for a refresher and I'm excited to see our visuals and audio evolving a bit obviously change is always a bit jarring at first but I also think it's good it helps to demarcate a moment in time maybe something that helps prompt a new Direction next up I have the announcement for ZK Summit 13 it's taking place on May 12th in Toronto the application to attend just space is more limited than normal this time around our venue caps out at around 400 so we are encouraging folks who really want to join to get their spot secured early it's invite only and we

will be prioritizing previous attendees and long-term members of the ZK Community if you are newer and really want to join just aim to get your application in early for a better chance of getting a spot the application to speak is also open this is part of the same application and that will remain open until March 15th for more info check out ZK summit.com we've also added the link in the show notes lastly as I mentioned in a little bonus episode two weeks ago the ZK podcast company is hiring we are currently looking to fill two roles a Content marketing manager and a strategic growth lead if you want to listen to that bonus to get a good sense for what we're looking for please do and if you think you could be a good

candidate please send an application all right that covers our updates so on to the story I want want to tell to start I do need to talk a little bit about how this podcast got its name and you have heard the story before I've shared it many times my old co-host Frederick and I when we started we had no name it was just called this podcast until episode 11 when we decided on the name zero knowledge so we knew at the highest level what zero knowledge was we knew about zcash and we noticed that every time you'd mention zero knowledge to a Smart engineer it would spark some genuine excitement and curiosity from

them so that was a good sign but really we ourselves were not involved in ZK research when we took that name back in 2018 but as more and more zero knowledge research came out and the space grew so too did our knowledge about the topic as well as our connection to it and so the zero knowledge podcast kind of manifested to actually be become the zero knowledge podcast and from there I went on to run the event series ZK Summit which I mentioned earlier I started the ZK hack project and all of the projects that came out of there like the ZK whiteboard sessions ZK mesh all of this work has been centered around zero knowledge and the applications that

it enables and as many of you know I have no background as a cryptographer or an engineer I've worked over the years in music video games and eventually in Tech but how and why I ended up working exclusively on ZK has seemed like a fluke but was it so that was a bit of the backstory I needed to share before we could jump in to the story I really want to tell you in the summer of 2023 when the show was about 5 years old I started to explore trademarks for the show and logo and so I did a search for the US trademark for zero knowledge I found a bunch of teams in our community teams we know today that had the name on their application but there was a batch of older

trademarks for zero knowledge that caught my eye these were from the late '90s and early 2000s and some of them were registered by a company called zero knowledge systems so I switched my search on the trademark website to zero knowledge systems to learn a bit more about them the first result that came up was zks which they applied to trademark in 2001 and I was so curious like who are these guys you can't find that much out from trademark applications you can find out like which lawyer they used and something about the types of businesses they run but you can find out where the company is located so I checked for the address of zero knowledge systems and

when I saw it my heart kind of flipped this company was registered in Montreal Canada that's my hometown but not just that the company was registered on sor Boulevard if you haven't been to Montreal let me give you a sense for the street it's a Street full of bars and restaurants and shops most of the buildings have three stories the facades are made of brick around the year 2000 I spent like 95% of my free time on that street I was a student but I was also a bit of a scener I spent a lot of time probably too much time hanging out in bars talking to people in bars I worked

in a bar I definitely was drinking too much in bars and singal Boulevard was my spot I know that being a bar person has a pretty negative connotation today you imagine it being Sleazy and sad and there are a lot of bars like that but our scene was way more fun and it was like a special time in those years on that street to be honest the web 3 scene at conferences and meetups remind me so much of that time there were the stars the critics the slightly IAL ogs the shiny eyed newbies people today arguing over l1s or l2s or why some tech is more sophisticated why some ecosystem is more authentic it reminds me of back then when we argued over which genre of music

was more sophisticated complicated authentic or underground and then like now these conversations were often an entry point to learn more generally about someone their motivation their background and maybe get inspired by some new insight or perspective they could share with you coming back to these trademarks according to what I've was seen zero knowledge systems was located somewhere on Salen Boulevard from the years 1998 to at least 2001 I had spent a lot of time on that street but I was mainly in like an eight block stretch of it so I was curious where on the street was this place I have not lived in Montreal for over 15 years so I couldn't exactly place the address just by looking at it

so I jumped on maps and typed in 3981 soron Boulevard W no freaking way I could not believe it zero knowledge systems in the year 2000 seem to have been located directly across the street and I mean directly across the street from my favorite bar like the bar I basically lived at during that time today the bar still exists it's called Barbarosa back then it was called blizzards it held maybe 50 60 people standing and I was a regular I was probably there like two to three times a week if you were working nearby and you

needed a good spot to hang out blizzards would have been a good option especially in the summer when the big windows out front opened right onto s ra the crowd at this place was about 10 years older than I was and there were tons of working professionals coming by after a long day of work looking at this on the map I started to think think like did the employees of zero knowledge systems also go to blizzards after work did they hang out there did I meet people back then from a company called zero knowledge systems did I hear them talking about all of this stuff did someone maybe explain to me what that name meant even back then what an insane coincidence that 15 years later I randomly stumble on the

same name and decide to name my podcast that name zero knowledge so this in itself is already pretty cool I have told this story many times for some of you listening you may have heard me tell this story it's one of the weirdest coincidences I've ever experienced it feels almost eerie and I have told this story a lot but this story actually continues back in April last year a day or two after ZK Summit 11 I was in Athens and I was with a big group at dinner I was telling everyone about zero knowledge systems and my proximity to it one of the guys at the table was like oh whoa you hung out

across the street from zero knowledge systems that company was legendary do you know who worked there and I was like not really and he was like well a bunch of the early bitcoiners went through there he told me that there were only a couple of companies working on digital currencies back in the late 90s and one of these was Zero knowledge systems now this is long before Bitcoin a this is 2000 but it seems like not only did zero knowledge systems have the name for the niche cryptography we talk about on this show but it also may have been an important contributor to the ideas and research that led to bitcoin and to the

blockchain ecosystem as we know it today that night when I got home I started to dig around the Wikipedia page for zero knowledge systems is actually kind of crazy I had looked at it when IID found the trademark but I had been trying to figure out about the company itself I hadn't looked that closely at the people who worked there now I was looking here are some of them Adam back Mike shaver Ian Goldberg the founders Austin Hill and some of the people working there later went on to found blockstream in 2014 but on the Wikipedia page it actually doesn't mention digital currencies these folks were definitely close to the people working on these

topics at their earliest Inception but it's tough to actually find out that much on this company most of the links are now dead or squatted on by random crypto companies soon after this I was introduced to someone who actually worked at zero knowledge systems his name is Jonathan and he's someone I hop to invite back on the show to ask him more about what it was like to work at zero knowledge systems what were some of the ideas being floated around at the time but also what he's worked on since cuz it's pretty interesting as well before I recorded this episode I did want to check a few things so I jumped on a call with him to ask a few of these questions my first question was whether or not zero knowledge systems actually worked on digital payments since this

wasn't clear from the Wikipedia page he told me that yes they had done some work on this implementing an early chamian digital currency but nothing that really took off they were more well known for a project called Freedom which was similar to what later became tour I asked him what happened to them he said the company started off as very edgy it made waves in the Montreal Tech scene zero knowledge systems also helped to highlight the need for privacy on the internet long before Snowden did but at some point they stopped working on freedom they pivoted to something safer the company renamed to radial point and was eventually sold now the last question and maybe the one that was most

important to me was the office for zero knowledge systems actually on sailon Boulevard like because I thought maybe this was just a PO box or the address for the administration but the office was somewhere else but Jonathan did confirm that it was indeed on sale and ra at that time that there were about a hundred people working there around 2001 they did moved to a larger location more downtown but in the year 2000 or so they would have been on Saleem r and here's a little bonus he told me that there had been a giant red sign with their logo that read zero knowledge on the building on Saron so I very well probably saw that sign every time I walked out or stumbled

out of that bar I want to see if I can dig up pictures from the window of the bar looking out it would be so cool if I could find this so yeah this has obviously got me out asking is this why I was so Keen to pick the name zero knowledge has it been wedged into my psyche for like 15 years it's so wild there are so many other questions too like who were all the people working there Beyond those listed on the Wikipedia page what did those people go on to do what was Freedom all about how was it built how far did they get with it and why did they make the decision to stop did they actually work on ZK Tech

itself or was it just their namesake I mean I don't think ZK was very usable at that time but what did they even imagine ZK would be used for in the future and last but not least I would love to know if anyone from zero knowledge systems ever went across the street to hang out at a bar called blizzards in the Years 2000 or 2001 that would be so interesting to know to me this feels a bit like the start of a story because I think it is I'm going to be doing a bit of a side quest this year to learn more about zero knowledge systems this sort of Oddball Montreal tech company from the year 2000 I'm going to try to get Jonathan and some other folks who work

there on the show to help me better understand what it was like working on this kind of Technology back then and there is a bit of a call out here if you worked at zero knowledge systems or know someone who did and you think you have a little piece of info that could add to this story get in touch you can send us an email at hello zeron knowledge. FM next week we start back with new interviews with teams doing amazing things in ZK today over the next few months we will be covering Quantum Computing AI lates and all sorts of great topics around ZK and applications and once again I am so excited to be back I want to say thank you to the podcast team Rachel Henrik and Tanya and to our listeners thanks for listening

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