Episode 342: Catch up with Zac and Ariel

Summary This week Anna (https://x.com/AnnaRRose) catches up with Zac Williamson (https://x.com/Zac_Aztec) & Ariel Gabizon (https://x.com/rel_zeta_tech) from Aztec (https://aztec.network/). They cover what each has been working on over the last year, Zac shared updates about the development of Aztec and the finalization of their underlying ZK system: MegaPlonk. Ariel discussed his latest research on IVC with his publications of the ProtoGalaxy and Stackproofs works and how properties of this systems brought him and Zac to start working together again. Here’s some additional links for this episode: Episode 273: History of Plonk, Noir, and the building of Aztec 3 (https://zeroknowledge.fm/273-2/) Episode 274: SNARKs: A Trilogy with Ariel Gabizon (https://zeroknowledge.fm/274-2/) 5:51 * zkSummit: plookup: Speeding up the PLONK prover - Zac Williamson & Ariel Gabizon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdlc1CmRYRY) 10:49 * ProtoGalaxy: Efficient ProtoStar-style folding of multiple instances by Liam Eagen and Ariel Gabizon (https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1106.pdf) 13:01 * HyperNova: Recursive arguments for customizable constraint systems by Kothapalli and Setty (https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/573.pdf) 13:01 * ProtoStar: Generic Efficient Accumulation/Folding for Special Sound Protocols by Bünz and Chen (https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/620.pdf) 27:24 * cq: Cached quotients for fast lookups by Eagen, Fiore and Gabizon (https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1763.pdf) 34:54 * Delegating Computation: Interactive Proofs for Muggles by Goldwasser, Kalai and Rothblum (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2008-DelegatingComputation.pdf) 34:54 * Unlocking the lookup singularity with Lasso by Setty, Thaler and Wahby (https://people.cs.georgetown.edu/jthaler/Lasso-paper.pdf) 36:36 * Stackproofs: Private proofs of stack and contract execution using Protogalaxy by Eagen, Gabizon, Sefranek, Towa and Williamson (https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1281.pdf) 54:32 * Accumulation without Homomorphism by Bünz, Mishra, Nguyen and Wang (https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/474.pdf) 55:24 * Aztec.network (https://aztec.network/) Check out the ZK Jobs Board (https://jobsboard.zeroknowledge.fm/) for the latest jobs in ZK at jobsboard.zeroknowledge.fm (https://jobsboard.zeroknowledge.fm/) zkSummit12 is happening in Lisbon next week on Oct 8th! Buy your ticket at zksummit.com (https://www.zksummit.com/), spots are limited! Episode Sponsors Attention, all projects in need of server-side proving, kick start your rollup with Gevulot's ZkCloud, the first zk-optimized decentralized cloud! Get started with a free trial plus extended grant opportunities for premier customers until Q1 2025. Register at Gevulot.com (https://gevulot.com/). Aleo (http://aleo.org/) is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup. As Aleo is gearing up for their mainnet launch in Q1, this is an invitation to be part of a transformational ZK journey. Dive deeper and discover more about Aleo at http://aleo.org/ (http://aleo.org/). If you like what we do: * Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree (https://linktr.ee/zeroknowledge) * Subscribe to our podcast newsletter (https://zeroknowledge.substack.com) * Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm (https://twitter.com/zeroknowledgefm) * Join us on Telegram (https://zeroknowledge.fm/telegram) * Catch us on YouTube (www.youtube.com/channel/UCYWsYz5cKw4wZ9Mpe4kuM_g)