Episode 390 - lean Ethereum Miniseries Kick-off with Anna & Nico

Transcript

Welcome to Zero Knowledge. I'm your host, Anna Rose. In this [music] 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. >> So, hey, Nico. Hey Anna, nice to be here. >> How are you doing? >> I'm good. Very excited. >> Nice. Yeah. We are here to announce something kind of special. Do you want to share with our listeners what we have planned?

>> Yeah, we have a little minieries brewing of episodes with a slightly different format, slightly different hosting style, >> aka Nico, you're going to be hosting. >> Yep. >> Uh we're doing a six-part miniseries. I had sort of teased this like a few weeks ago in a bonus episode we released. Um, yeah, something that this was Nico, this was your initiative, but you kind of suggested covering lean Ethereum. >> Mhm. >> You have ZK sort of woven through that >> Yeah. >> proposal.

>> And even though we, you know, I had Justin on the show, I think we both were on that interview last year, >> um, mid midway through the year, there's a lot going on there. >> There's tons. Yeah. Yeah. And your idea was like, why don't we do like a multi-art on this? >> Yeah. Well, actually what happened is after that episode with Justin, as we're recording or as we finished recording, he said, "Oh, by the way, the Ethereum Foundation is doing this like PQ workshop in Cambridge in a month, uh, Nico, if you'd like to join, you know, come on over." And so I went, you know, not really knowing what to expect. And yeah, there's this whole world of like upgrading Ethereum to Postquantum, adding ZK everywhere across the stack.

Um, and so I made think, yeah, let's cover all this in a little series. >> So cool. Actually, in that is there are they are they going like the lattice route for the postquantum? >> No, this is all hashbased and that's part of the fun like we're going to talk about hashbased signatures all the recent like proximity gaps things and hashbased ns. >> How does the like the proximity prize like the initiative that Justin had actually mentioned on the show? I think he announced it there >> and I know like Dan and >> Jackamo and like there's a bunch of people who are involved in judging this proximity prize. What's the status of it and like how does it weave into this lean Ethereum?

>> Yeah. So the whole idea is >> almost putting all your eggs in the same basket which is hashbased stuff. >> Okay. [laughter] >> Um and so if you're going to do that you want to make sure it's super super secure. >> So they have these prizes they have all this formal verification happening. They also have like new bounties for the poson hash function. Um, all that because like yeah, all the eggs are in one basket and we have to make sure it's safe. >> Do you think if they find it doesn't work there could be a shift over to lattises? >> No idea. >> Yeah. Maybe maybe something to ask. [laughter] >> Something to ask on the episodes, but usually what happens is like latises also rely on hash functions. We still do fatamir.

>> Okay. Okay. >> Whereas hash functions is really like the least you can assume. Like this is the smallest assumption we can make and that's >> part of why they called it lean. Like it's as lean as possible. >> Cool. What topics do you want to cover? >> Mhm. So the plan is firstly to get an overview. Um and we're lucky to have Justin Drake coming on again to explain sort of what the upgrade is all about. >> And then I want to talk about the signature schemes that go into it. like what how and why are they postquantum. Um all the security around like snarks proximity gaps we keep mentioning that's going to be an episode of its own. Um and there's going to be plenty more about like implementation uh devets and formal verification. >> And maybe you kind of mentioned this but

it has a different format. We're going to be doing something slightly different. >> Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to try my my hand at hosting for a bit. um >> actually running interviews and on video and in shorter formats. >> Yes. So something we you know this show has been audio only pretty much since the start. Although actually there is an there's an episode that we did Yes. >> all about the ZK jargon decoder. >> Decoder >> which has like slides and was like a video. >> Um but yeah, kind of throwing back to that format, we're going to be doing the sixparter as video. So, if you are a listener of the show and you're used to just listening to it on your podcast >> um player, it will still be airing there,

>> but you might want to check it out on the YouTube channel. And I think we're also going to try to air it on X. So, >> yeah, keep keep that in mind if you if you want to see like a kind of a new format. >> By the way, it's worth mentioning we're not doing like a whiteboard session or we're not doing slides like there isn't things you need to read, but it is still like a video format. So, what's the goal of this series, Nico? What are you going to try like what are you trying to figure out through this six-p part series? >> That's a really good question and I I wish I had thought about it a bit more [laughter] before starting. Yeah, the idea was like this is cool cryptography happening. It's one of the first like major protocols out there to like move towards postquantum.

>> Yeah. >> Uh it involves the cryptography that we know and love on the show. >> Nice. And so I thought it was interesting to cover how the things we like and the things we talk about weave into this new agenda for Ethereum. >> I think that sounds like a great mission for this miniseries. So yeah, to our listeners and hopefully viewers, the this series will be kicking off today. Um later today we're going to release the first of these episodes. It'll be running for six weeks. So yeah, stay tuned for this. I'm very much looking forward to also kind of having something regular happening over on YouTube. Not something we do >> that often, although I guess we did the whiteboard in the fall. Um, but yeah, this is kind of like a new format for us, an experiment. And if you like this

mini miniseries format, let us know because it might be something we do again later this year on a different topic. So, I want to take a little detour from this announcement. I know we're focused on the series, but I since I have you here, >> I thought I'd actually share something else that's coming up. Something that we've finally finalized, which is that we're going to be hosting CKS Summit 14. Uh this is now official. We are announcing it this week or we recently announced it. Um yeah, so we're going to be hosting it in May, May 7th in Rome. >> Lovely. >> The speaker application is now open. We're going to be collecting all of the talks. Selection will be tight. This is always the case like you know be sure to actually submit a real submission. Some people just sort of put holds in but

>> usually the program fills up really quickly. So >> there's a lot of applications and a lot of incredible talks. So unfortunately if you're too vague >> it's really hard for us to know whether or not we can give you the talk. >> Totally. Yeah. So try to submit a proper full talk. Try to get it in before the deadline obviously. Um and also if you want to attend we also ask you to fill out this application form. You just choose the option like when I think we ask do you want to give a talk you just say no you want to just attend.

>> Um the reason we have this application form is space is limited. Space is always limited for the summit, but I think this year especially because in general, just to note to the audience, I don't know if you're fully aware of this, but producing events in the last year, I guess, has become harder for all of the the big events that have been going on. >> We're really lucky and I'm super excited that we have some fantastic sponsors who are joining us this for this edition so that we can do the ZK summit. So, thank you to those folks. Mhm. >> But like a lot of those other events, we have to be a little bit more budget conscious. We are going to have to sort of cap uh attendance a little bit more closely this time around. So if you really want to come, please get your application in early

>> and yeah, and I hope you'll do that and then we'll get to see you at the event. >> Yeah, we're excited to come back with the ZK Summit for this year and hopefully we'll see you there. >> Also, Rome and May is going to be incredible. Amazing. Oh yeah. And this is the reason we chose that. We chose it because the week right after that is Euro Crypt. There's also ZK proofs and a Zcash event. So there's a lot going on that week around ZK around sort of advanced cryptography. We thought it would be kind of fun to piggyback with some of these other events. It's almost like a week of ZK stuff. So if you're heading over to Rome anyways, be sure to get that application in early. Cool. So we won't do our sort of closing statement. the usual and to our

listeners dot dot dot because actually please check out the first episode that's coming out of the first episode of this miniseries that's going to be coming out shortly. Cool. Thanks Nico. >> Thanks Anna. >> See [music] you soon. >> [music]