ZK-Roller-Coaster #13

September 13th, 2023

This is the 13th edition of ZK-Roller-Coaster where we track and investigate the most exciting, meaningful, and crazy ZK-stuff of the prior two weeks.

And this is the 8th edition of ZK-Roller-Coaster produced by the Taiko community!

Special thanks to 13th edition contributors: Yona, Hlpr.

Disclaimer: this is a collection of tweets, writings, videos, and other materials; these don’t express our opinion and may not necessarily be accurate. Please do (or continue) your own research.

Hold on tight! 🎢

Spice of the weeks 🍿

“StarkWare just zero'd all user balances on old wallets that didn't upgrade to latest contracts…” Community wonders how much power and control the L2 projects have. And even though the upgrade was reenabled, allowing users to immediately regain access to their accounts, the question about how decentralized the “decentralized networks” are is more relevant than ever.

ZK and rollups research 🧙

An article: “Why multi-prover matters for rollups. SGX as a possible solution.” by Lisa A. | bot.
Twitter thread: Kobi ran the RISC Zero bonsai zk-co-processor on Scroll. As a recap, the co-processor was performing many scalar multiplications on secp256r1.
A common project of Mina Protocol and LambdaClass. It introduces the proof generation, posting, and verification of the validity of Mina states into an EVM chain, which will serve as a foundation for token bridging.
ethresearch post: Plasma free by Barry White Hat. They propose Plasma Free that supports EVM, can run any EVM contract, and has a gas fee (only prover cost ~0) that is independent of L1. The only cost is the prover cost.
As a part of the ZK-GPU Masterclass (organized by Ingonyama), Kobi, Shani, Tomer, Shahar, robik, Ido, and Karthik implemented efficient add and mul operations on the M31 field (2^31 - 1) in CUDA to learn about GPU programming.
Twitter thread about arithmetization by Eli Ben-Sasson.
Panther Protocol announced the newest research paper about optimizing the addition gate count in Plonkish circuits.
Twitter thread on Zeth & why it matters by zerokn0wledge.

ZK and rollups updates 🎈

Introducing GEVULOT - A permissionless & programmable L1 blockchain for deploying zk provers and verifiers as on-chain programs.
Are ZK Rollups coming to Bitcoin?
Zellic ZK Map, an ongoing effort to track the most important advancements in all things zero-knowledge.
OP Stack developers can start leveraging the decentralization, speed, & scale of the Espresso shared sequencer network.
Introducing Layer N — Ethereum's financial layer: zk-OP hybrid roll-ups with inter-rollup messaging and shared liquidity.

Non-ZK industry highlights and research 🎡

A paper “Blockchain Privacy and Regulatory Compliance: Towards a Practical Equilibrium” by Vitalik Buterin, Jacob Illum, Matthias Nadler, Fabian Schär, and Ameen Soleimani.
ethresearch post: Fun and games with inclusion lists by barnabe.eth.
Some thoughts on “two-tiered” staking (a proposal from Dankrad presenting a hypothetical native liquid staking token design) by mikeneuder.eth.
ethresearch post: PeerDAS – a simpler DAS approach using battle-tested p2p components by Danny Ryan.
ethresearch post: Strong Builder Identity for Combating Builder Imposter Attacks by Max Resnick.
ethresearch post: Cumulative, Non-Expiring Inclusion Lists by Toni Wahrstätter.

Opportunities and events 🏄‍♀️

September 22-24, ETHGlobal Hackathon in NYC.
September 20, zkSummit 10, the latest in zk tech, tools, products, & research. The schedule is now live.
PSE shared a notion page with all upcoming “Learn & Share” sessions.

Readings and watchings 🎞

General

Web3 Builders Episode: Vitalik Buterin on Travel Hacks, Pandemic Prevention, Longevity and Ethereum's Roadmap.
zeroknowledge.fm episode with Mallesh Pai, Assoc. Prof of Economics at Rice University. They explore mechanisms design in an economic context and Mallesh’s work around MEV topics - specifically on censorship in an MEV context.
An article: “A survey of ZK Languages” by Zero Knowledge Validator.

Fancy mathematics and cryptography

A paper: Improving Asynchrony Resilience in Dynamically Available Total-Order Broadcast Protocols by Francesco D'Amato, Giuliano Losa, and Luca Zanolini.
A paper: A Lattice-based Publish-Subscribe Communication Protocol using Accelerated Homomorphic Encryption Primitives by Anes Abdennebi and Erkay Savaş.