Welcome to Noirland

Transcript

Thank you. Thank you for the lovely intro. Um GMGM everyone good and Morgan is the true GM here in Berlin. Uh lovely being here with you all. Um given the lack of laughters, can we get a raise of hand of how many people here speak just a bit of German? German the language lovely and how many of you also program a bit of noir the language yes that is a very hot pivot to the topic that I want to share on okay that's actually a decent crowd lovely but yeah um I'm not afraid of hard pivots um so thank you all for for going through that but yeah I'm Savio from Aztec um lovely here sharing a bit more about about

programmable privacy but also particularly with noir with you all um a brief brief rundown of what we'll be going through today would be a bit on what is CK. So don't worry if you didn't raise your hand just now uh because we also have a very brief what is no session as well and then we will take a very lovely glimpse into the noir land on what's happening with the language what have people been building with it hopefully an exciting journey for you all um but starting off what is CK to begin with um if you are getting back home after today just remember a bottle of beautiful CK proofs is actually in my hand right now we'll go through how but By formal definition, CK what we will normally refer to it as zero knowledge

proofs. It's basically computation plus proving plus hidden inputs. We'll go through them one by one. So don't worry too much about it. But what we are usually used to would be pure computation. This is what you do on running your programs written in Python written in Rust. Um you're simply computing for example 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 2. And then serum knowledge proofs. The proofs part is that you don't only just compute but you're also proving what you want to compute as well. And the serial knowledge part is that you can prove about it without reviewing all the inputs without reviewing all the informations that you feed into the program to begin with. And that makes a zero knowledge proof. Basically proving

things without reviewing everything. You might still be thinking at this point what on earth does that mean? for for the lovely German speaking community vase is happening here. Uh but back to the example of a bottle of beautiful zero knowledge proofs. Um this is a this is a basic typical workflow of how a zero know proof goes through things. Um first you have an input you have an input towards your program and then there's the prover or the anifier person that interacts between the proof. The prover basically takes the inputs um bring it into some computation and then brings it to some proving operation which outputs a proof that then gets

passed to the fur via which does the ferocation. Um and in this case a bottle of Coca-Cola is the zero knowledge proof itself. And what it actually proves is that uh Coca-Cola has a recipe behind it. a secret Coca-Cola recipe of the beautiful bottle of drinks that you get every day. Um, well, hopefully not every day, but that is basically the zero knowledge proof pipeline pipeline. It's a it's a proof of a recipe that you don't want to review to the world, but once you get the chance to taste a bottle of Coca-Cola or maybe many bottles of Coca-Cola, you kind of know that Coca-Cola has a recipe to consistently produce that know uh that proof to you. And what does that relate to noir? Like what is noir to begin with

to have anything to do with zero knowledge? Um before Noah existed um the way that people code and program serial knowledge proofs is through unfortunately C++ libraries or maybe if you are familiar with circum you are building basically circuits tying things like literally electronic circuits where you tie inputs signals into logic gates then outputs um values which it's still computation but it's not what we are all familiar with and it makes me cry. Um I'm not sure about you but I don't like coding in C++ to begin with. Um and then it brought the born the birth of noir itself from five years ago. The first

commits which then flourished into the beautiful CK language that we have today that works on chain on different chains offchain on different devices, web browsers, mobile proving systems or mobile phones. I mean um even across different proving technologies with 100 plus contributors these days um working on the language itself as well as the ecosystem around it. And what Noir brings to table is simply three things. First of all simplicity um that is in syntax that is in developer tooling that is in the entire developer experience to make it as simple as possible to build uh a zero knowledge proof to build a CK app to begin with.

The second part is open source. Um it means permissive act permissive access to building zero knowledge proofs. You don't need to pay a price. You don't need to get permission get whitelisted to start building. It also means credibly neutral. Um we try our best to to decentralize as well as make it as neutral as possible as a as a public good for people to use to build CK proofs. If you don't like it, you can always fork it as well. Um that's the beauty of open source. And the third value that Noah brings to the table is universal as I mentioned working across different chains even offchain and also web friendly to begin with um for everyone to build the CK app that they are they are imagining for and

so the language itself evolved into a beautiful one um with unsigned integers with signed integers but also with um it's behind the screenshot itself but with a lot of different language features that you are used to in a general purpose um programming language traits um control flows etc. It also comes with a great suite of libraries um not just by us the moderately sized um contributing team but also the much bigger no community that we have today all the way from data types to even maybe even storage proof libraries if you want to do something fancy and it also comes with great tooling um f code support uh debugger um nojs packages for you to deploy on web uh web app to begin

with. So a lot of beautiful tooling as well and of course at the end of the day the beautiful community that we both have here but also uh joining us online or perhaps joining us async online as well um that works on noir curious about noir and always building with noir. So talking a lot about the things behind Noir or what noir is let's dive into what people have been building with noir. Um kicking off with CK Passport. Amazing team working on amazing technology that um a lot of CK if you are from the CK space you are probably very used to the analogy or the explanation of um we can do a proof that you are an adult without reviewing your date of birth to begin with. Turns out

it's a very challenging problem. But uh when it when you factor in the many different countries with the many different ident identification and passport technology that they that they each choose to adopt. Um but the CK passport team is doing an amazing job to support a lot of different countries at this point to actually generate a proof of your passport, a proof of your age, a proof of your country for example, a proof of even your name. Um hopefully one day we'll be starting a Savio Dow to begin with. Um but oh fun fact on CK passport by the way if you are buying your deaf connect tickets these days or looking at options and if you happen to be from Latin America you can actually generate a zero knowledge proof of your

passport and get 50% off. So um it's something that uh has been in development and has been in deployment for a while now. And there's also the amazing team behind CK email working on the technology that proves your email. So this could be emails from your let's say employer. This could be an email of your Twitter account. This could be an email from even trading view. This then unlocks a lot of interesting use cases where you can cryptographically proof for example trading uh trading view data as an oracle. You can prove your employee employment um details or employment emails to testify your job role to testify your your uh kind of what you work on, what you are

profession. Um, and the CK email team has been building this amazing technology as the founding stone to unlock a lot of those email based applications. Basically bridging email data that you have today into the web3 world or in whatever world that we want to um throw a CK proof in. There's also the Tazo team that is working on beautiful technology marrying um MPC which does very good at uh private computation over private data that no one needs to know. Um we will go through a bit on perhaps some of the applications later but marrying that MPC technology with zero knowledge proofs to cryptographically attest to that those operations and to cryptographically

compose uh those those beautiful private computations with all the other CK apps or with all the other even normal apps if you throw a verify in um to tie those two technologies together there's a bold team that works on um serial knowledge proving open banking APIs. So open banking is a standard that traditional commercial banks that we are all using today are kind of gradually adopting to share information um in a in a kind of secret manner or a a tested manner of your bank account. So you can for example request um your bank balance, you can request your transaction history etc through the open

banking API from your own banks. And what both the bold team is trying to do is to do a zero knowledge proof of those specific requests without reviewing all the information behind. That means for example if I am able to prove my transaction to a certain um let's say on ramper that is available on chain with that proof alone I can already claim for example the USDC that I'm trading for uh through an offchain channel and that builds a pretty minimally trusted um on-ramping off-ramping system through the boat um initiative itself and then there's the open bands team that is working on CK glass door so it brings brings the beauty of um CK JWTs

that is login credentials from your Google account for example Apple account etc. Um and it also brings together CK emails that we mentioned just now and you can cryptographically prove that you work for a particular company at what salary. Um, if you want to reveal that and at the same time, you don't necessarily need to reveal who you are within the company while you get a very tr uh very very very trustable or very ver very viable proof that attests to your salary range that attest to your uh role in the company and you can um kind of um review the company itself without well a a big problem for Glasto itself is um people can either post very very permissionlessly but then there's very

to verification about their actual role and what they are actually doing in the company. Um if they stricten things up then then the the hurdles or the the verifications that users have to go through to actually make a pose on glass door would be would be immense. And with cryptography that kind of minimizes that barrier without trading off the the uh trusted assumption or trading off the the reliability of the information that people poses on the platform itself. And speaking of posting things, stealth node is a project that works on um knowledge proving your email or your login credentials so that you can post a message without revealing who you are

from that particular organization. Um that was definitely not me trashing about Linux um two minutes before capturing the the screenshot itself. But basically you can uh privately post um certain thoughts or certain things without um revealing who you are. This could be for fun um trash poses but also perhaps if you think about journalism this could be a very good way to to whistle blow as well um without necessarily revealing who you are within the company. Um and the mobile proving team is actually working on mobile proving with noir and they have recently come together with the proof of concept of mobile proving stealth note that we mentioned just now fully on mobile. Um so it's amazing that we're now not only able to do noir proofs on web browsers

but also can do it on mobile phones where um most if not all people probably love. Um and posting things does not only limited it's not only limited to organizations as well. Um Anon World is working on a a social platform where you can post things based on your token um ownership. So for example, this particular forum that they have um is a forum that you can only post if you own a certain amount of Ethereum. Um so it attestes to if you look closely you can see some of the post actually shows like this person owns two plus E. um the next person actually owns four plus ETH but not necessarily reviewing how many ETH they own. Um and definitely not like which address that's that tied to. And

this gives you the flexibility to pose with skin in the game but not necessarily revealing who you are. Um and then there's also the beautiful team at CK Poke that works on social um with noir through signaling the intention that you want to connect with some person. um it could be evolving into a dating app. It could be evolving into a business application but basically what it does is that you can share some information about yourself um before actually connecting with the person. So for example, you can share your first name but not your last name.

You can share about your hobbies without what um for example maybe your religion. You can share about um which country you are based in but not necessarily the city. Um and only until the other person accepts kind of your signal intent and is willing to connect share the information with you. At that point you will be sharing more information with that person. So you kind of get a a two level or maybe even build into multi level of um trust um based on personal information. Uh when it comes to social there's the CK coverage team that is working on CKGPS um that proves your GPS location and attest it against known hurricane paths for example or known

natural disaster paths um and that then gives you a cryptographic proof of if you are for example affected by a certain um um natural disaster and then cryptographically unlocks for example your insurance claim or maybe governmental aid um for what um you might be eligible for given the unfortunate event you have going through. And there's also Terry Escape. This is a beautiful team working on when we think about privacy, we always think about we we often think about like the the harsh part of like security, the harsh part of like um how do we make the society work, the harsh part of how we make private money work. But there is also the beautiful part of like privacy

is fun to begin with. like all games to a certain all fun games to a certain extent involve privacy. When you think about if you play League of Legends, if you play Dota, if you play CS GO, if you play uh uh if you play Hearthstone, if you play even poker to begin with, um there's always a certain amount of hidden information from your players to actually make the gameplay experience engaging. Terry Escape is one of the uh little gaming team that works on noir with gaming. Um basically two players control two um batches of agents to fight against each other in the darkness. Um very interesting experiment that they are working on. And there's also the CK among us team where they are working particularly on uh fog of war

with in cryptography using Tazo's technology if I recall correctly. Um where one person your player only sees the other player if they are close enough but not if they are far apart. Um this might be very easy to do if you are working in traditional gaming because you simply have a server hosting all the information and the server does not reveal anything. Um but with this case everything is actually cryptographically proven which um you don't even need a server to begin with. You can have a P2P game um with F of War which is amazing to begin with. Um and with all those innovations there are also kind of traditional boring things that Noir can do good as well. Um the Aragon CK research team has been working on the

private voting initiative for the noun dial which you can do private fully private onchain voting um based on your nouns um NFT ownership. There's also one KX that built the CK safe um implementation where you can do private multisex on chain rather than fully transparent and public ones. Uh there's also the noari team that is working on a lending market uh that gives you privacy as well. So think Ave compound but rather than fully public positions rather than fully public ownerships, you can actually lend money and borrow money in a private manner.

Amazing stuff. Um but yeah, I've gone through just a bit of like what have people been building in in the Noah ecosystem. some of the project teams that I mentioned just now and some that uh weren't even um included in the slides will be talking more about their projects doing deeper dives at noon next week. So if you are interested definitely sign up l domar noon 2 would love to see you there and chat more um but yeah a few takeaways um if we are going back home from this talk um it's quite a long one so remember zero knowledge proofs um equals Coca-Cola a bottle of Coca-Cola is a good proof um and noir is basically the language the way that you can brew your own Coca-Cola and it's prime time for oh sorry prime

time for privacy um so hopefully that's a very uh nice glimpse into the future that we can all build together. Um and lovely to take some questions if you have any. Um but thank you all. >> Thank you very much Savio. We got a couple of questions. So um yeah, let me kick this off here. First uh what are the current limits of the Noir language? For example, the size of inputs, expected latency and so on. >> Thank you. Um so when we think about serial knowledge proofs usually the the limitations would come from the overhead versus normal computation. Um and it of course depends on what you want to do

particularly. Um but if you are wanting to for example port an entire uh risk 5 architecture into CK that's what most um CKVM teams are doing you can see a very immense um computation overhead. But for a lot of simpler use cases, for example, the ones that I highlighted just now, like CK passport, CK email, etc., those are fully provable, for example, within seconds on your mobile phone. So, um, it took a lot of immen um, impressive work from the teams, but um, we are we are already there. If you want to ship something meaningful in production um, in terms of performance and in terms of limitation specifically, the limitation is simply your hardware. Um, if you have better hardware, then you can run more

things. Um, if you have less hardware, you can run less things, but with the tech stack itself, there's no like hard limitation of what you can do. >> Perfect. Okay, we got another one here. Are you planning to support more backends um than Bretenburg uh soon and yeah, in terms of docs and tooling and so on. >> Yeah, that's a very good question. Um, as I mentioned, Noir is meant to be universal in the beginning. So from the day one of designing Noir we have been working towards a generalized language that works across different proving backends. Um in fact today it works with Burtonberg yes from from Aztec labs but it also works with multiple different backends like world has been building

the prover kit back end um based on Spartan if I recall correctly. Solana has been working on a gnar back end. Um there are two plongi2 implementations that works with noir as well. Check out awesome noir um on GitHub and you can find a proving backend session which shows which back end already works with noir and if you are building one definitely get in touch as well. >> And somewhat related here does Noir support Halo 2? Is there complexity overhead when using Noir compared to native libs like uh Halo 2?

>> That's also a very good question. Um there was a Halo 2 proving backend implementation that works with noir. Um I think it's outdated right now given the lack of kind of interest in continuing the development itself. Um but yes it works. Short answer is it works. The long answer is um it needs more work to get it working. And so far the last question yeah you can still ask one and while this one is being answered but when enoms >> oh that's from a good norian here um follow the GitHub issue is what I would recommend um and stay tuned from there if you want to PR we welcome PRs as well

it's an open source project we can all contrib