devcon 6 / scaling privacy with starlight
Duration: 00:28:23
Speaker: Chaitanya Konda, Paul Brody
Type: Talk
Expertise: Intermediate
Event: Devcon
Date: Oct 2022
Nightfall - The Open Source Privacy Solution for Ethereum
We believe that public blockchain is the future of business to business transactions. However, two issues - privacy and scalability - will need to be solved if this vision is to be fully realised. This talk will explain the motivations behind the open-source nightfall code and how it is intended to tackle the first of these issues. We cover the operation of the protocol, the method by which it provides complete privacy, and how developers can use it to build their own applications by making use of its smart contract infrastructure and the ZoKrates framework. We will also present our modelling of transaction costs, which shows that nightfall can already provide a cost-competitive alternative to private blockchains for many situations and how that will be true for a growing number of use cases in the near future.
Keynote: Lessons learned from Tor
I will share lessons learned during Tor's twenty years as free software fighting for privacy and human rights. We'll talk about distributed trust and privacy by design, how to help people understand the good uses of your tech, getting allies in both cypherpunks and government, why transparency and community-building are so essential to trust, and successes from other spaces. It may seem like the crypto wars never really end, but we all have a part to play in saving the world.
Keynote: Glass Houses and Tornados
The Tornado Cash sanctions and criminal prosecutions have challenged longstanding assumptions within crypto about the limits of money transmission licensing, money laundering statutes, and sanctions laws. They've also revealed a longstanding assumption from some in policy and law enforcement circles: that blockchains have always been and must remain transparent. Neither assumption has served us well and the time has come for legal certainty. This talk is about how we get there.
Tending the Infinite Garden: Organizational Culture in the Ethereum Ecosystem
This presentation will discuss the findings of the academic paper "Tending the Infinite Garden: Organisational Culture in the Ethereum Ecosystem" by Dr. Paul-Dylan-Ennis and Ann Brody. Our study examines the decision-making processes fundamental to Ethereum's protocol governance, drawing on interviews with Ethereum's core developers. We identify a central worldview in Ethereum known as the "Infinite Garden" and discuss how Ethereum's social layer is crucial for upholding cypherpunk values.
Keynote: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again: Why we need privacy
The Web3 revolution seeks to address the sins of Web2. However, in doing so, it’s created an even worse outcome for users - users’ data is publicly available and makes them vulnerable to state-level censorship and adverse actions. This talk will address the philosophical as well as practical considerations of privacy in Web3. Privacy is an industry-wide issue and sits at the heart of all that is Web3. Understanding why privacy matters involves recognizing that it is not an isolated concept bu
Keynote: How to Properly Open Source Software: Lessons Learned from the Linux Foundation
It can be challenging to properly open source software: there are licenses, IP, security reporting, and many other issues that need to be addressed. In this talk, we will discuss the best practices for open source software development learned from almost 25 years of experience at the Linux Foundation. Attendees will learn about how to set up their projects for a variety of potential goals, including things like maximizing security and community building.
Building a Unirep ecosystem
What does an identity ecosystem built on top of Unirep look like? Learn how reputation works in a system where participants are anonymous and how it can be used to build applications.
Interep: An Identity Bridge from Web2 to Web3
Interep aims to provide an identity solution for Ethereum users by bridging from an established digital identity source, typically a web2 platform. The product provides an identity layer in an application stack, and integrates with a privacy-focussed layer using the Semaphore framework. Interep can be used to to qualify users, or as an anti-sybil service.
Public-Private Composability
Learn about the challenges of designing a private execution layer for Ethereum. Previously, smart contract execution (L1 & L2) has been fully public. Some apps provide basic private functionality for a single private state (e.g. privacy coins). We'll discuss ways to execute general private and public state changes across multiple smart contracts in one transaction, within a zk-rollup. This unlocks programmable private smart contracts.
Protecting your Privacy within the Blockchain Ecosystem
Robertas Visinskis gives their talk titled, "Protecting your Privacy within the Blockchain Ecosystem"