devcon 6 / vampire a novel cheap to verify zksnark
Duration: 00:08:24
Speaker: Michal Zajac
Type: Lightning Talk
Expertise:
Event: Devcon
Date: Oct 2022
Categories
ZETH: On Integrating Zerocash on Ethereum
Transaction privacy is a hard problem on an account-based blockchain such as Ethereum. While Ben-Sasson et al. presented the Zerocash protocol [BCG+14] as a decentralized anonymous payment (DAP) scheme standing on top of Bitcoin, no study about the integration of such DAP on top of a ledger defined in the account model was provided. In this paper we aim to fill this gap and propose ZETH, an adaptation of Zerocash that can be deployed on top of Ethereum without making any change to the base layer. Our study shows that not only ZETH could be used to transfer Ether, the base currency of Ethereum, but it could also be used to transfer other types of smart contract-based digital assets. We propose an analysis of ZETH's privacy promises and argue that information leakages intrinsic to the use of this protocol are controlled and well-defined, which makes it a viable solution to support private transactions in the context of public and permissioned chains.
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: 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: 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.
Scalability is Boring, Privacy is Dead: ZK-Proofs, What are They Good for?
The first mainstream uses of zero-knowledge(zk) proofs were for private payments in systems like Zcash and then scalability. In both, we hide data to improve privacy or validation costs. But private payments, unfortunately, have seen limited direct demand. And scalability needs faster proofs but not even zero-knowledge. What are practical zk proofs good for? This talk considers zk proofs + blockchains as a tool both for cryptocurrency and broader applications.
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.
Lunarpunk Endgame
Global surveillance is a static world where change is surpressed and society cannot evolve. In contrast, an anonymity-enhanced world resembles a forest. New civilizational experiments blossom like flowers, radiating outward from the freedom-fighters of the future. The lunarpunk end game is to enable a new ecology of social orders. This talk will describe the grand vision of lunarpunk: multipolar space-faring civilization, human speciation, and the reproduction life throughout the cosmos.
Cryptography on the Blockchain
I have a LocalCrypto.sol library (i.e. all in solidity) that supports El Gamal Encryption, One out of Two ZKP (i.e. either yes or no is encrypted), Pederson Commitments, Inequality proof (i.e. two commitments DO NOT commit to the same data), Equality proofs (i.e. two commitments DO commit to the same data), Discrete log equality proofs, and publicly verifiable secret sharing. I’m currently organising the code for public release (let others experiment with cryptography on the blockchain) – i’d like to present the library, its capability, some projects I have used it in and how people can start using it today.
Protecting your Privacy within the Blockchain Ecosystem
Robertas Visinskis gives their talk titled, "Protecting your Privacy within the Blockchain Ecosystem"