This is the 9th 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 4th edition of ZK-Roller-Coaster produced by the Taiko community!

Special thanks to 9th edition contributors: Alex_ADEdge, kshyun28, BluePillow alexanderblv, yona

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 🍿

• Celo proposed transitioning from an independent EVM-compatible L1 to an Ethereum L2. This transition is supposed to happen using EigenLayer to support validation and promote fast finality via dual-staking of CELO and ETH, and EigenDA for data commitments. The community suggests that, on the one hand, the L1 → Ethereum L2 transition might become a trend in the foreseeable future. On the another hand, it’s not obvious that having many L2s makes a lot of sense.

ZK and rollups research 🧙

• An article “17 misconceptions about SNARKs (and why they hold us back)” by Justin Thaler.

• A twitter thread: Spearbit identified in the preliminary review of the Polygon zkEVM protocol a critical vulnerability (fixed) due to insufficient validation of division remainders.

• A seminar recording on analyzing Polygon's zkEVM PIL State Machines by Spearbit.

• A twitter longread: zkSync Era presented a new high-performance proof system for decentralization.

• A twitter thread: Jarrod Watts made a ZK-EVM comparison building a dApp on each of them.

• A twitter thread: Aztec Labs shared two finalists from the Sequencer Selection Request for Proposals and briefly explained their solutions.

• A twitter thread: Scott Sunarto argues that “while there's good reason to aim for eth client diversity in L1, there is very little benefit for them in L2”.

• A twitter thread: why ZK is hard to learn and my take on how to learn it by Jeffrey Scholz.

• A twitter thread: Harry Kalodner talks about a sequencer decentralization topic that is often misunderstood.

ZK and rollups updates 🎈

• Espresso shared sequencer announced the integration with Polygon zkEVM on testnet Doppio.

• Aleo.Tools Updated.

• Manta Network introduced Manta Pacific: the EVM-native modular L2 for ZK applications.

• Account Abstraction is coming to Arbitrum. An improvement was announced.

• Powdr labs introduced powdr, a modular stack for zkVMs.

• Kroma (a new universal ZK Rollup on Ethereum) launched the second testnet.

Non-ZK industry highlights and research 🎡

• CoW Swap introduced CoW Hooks that allow users to group multiple DeFi actions into one intent.

• The 10th Ethereum Foundation Research AMA was held on Reddit.

• Coinbase Wallet announced wallet-to-wallet messaging powered by Lens Protocol.

• A research paper “The Centralizing Effects of Private Order Flow on Proposer-Builder Separation” was introduced by Max Resnick, Mallesh Pai, and Tivas Gupta.

• Flashbots introduced the MEVM and shared an update on SUAVE.

• Mike Neuder shared an FAQ doc on EIP-7251, the proposal to increase the MAX_EFFECTIVE_BALANCE.

Opportunities and events 🏄‍♀️

• Only several days left to apply for the Devconnect Scholars Program. Possible thanks to the EF Next Billion.

• Axiom announced the second iteration of the Axiom Open Source Program, an accelerated program to get you from ZK basics to building ZK circuit primitives and applications in halo2 in 8 weeks.

• Tachyon, a web3 accelerator, announced TachyonX, a new program for founders at the very beginning of their journey.

• August 27th, SBC-Berkeley Day: Future of Decentralization Technology & Computing Summit.

• Help to craft the next ZKRC #10.

Readings and watchings 🎞

General

• Uncommon Core 2.0, a podcast by Hasu from flashbots, is back. The first episode of the second season is out.

• Recordings from crediblecommitments.WTF by flashbots “What are some concrete, approachable ways to study and implement cooperative AI?”

• A Taiko forum post “Trying to explain zkEVM” [Minimal Words Edition] by ∆lex ÐelderfiΞld.

• An article “Hybrid rollups: discover Metis, Fraxchain, Aztec, Miden, and Ola” by Pandinetta.

Fancy mathematics and cryptography

• A recording of the talk “SuperNova and Parallelizing Nova” by CPerezz.eth.

• A new folding paper “ProtoGalaxy: Efficient ProtoStar-style folding of multiple instances” by Ariel Gabizon and Liam Eagen.

• A new paper describing the new results on the Fiat-Shamir security of several protocols widely used in practice: FRI, batched FRI, and most Plonk-like zk SNARKs that use low-degree proximity testing as a subroutine by Pratyush Ranjan Tiwari.

• A recording of the talk “Deep dive into ProtoStar paper & protocol” with Binyi Chen.

• An article “Converting Algebraic Circuits to R1CS (Rank One Constraint System)” by Jeffrey Scholz.

• An article on writing efficient & performant rust by Jon Becker.

• “A hard problem in elementary geometry,” Timothy Gowers solves maths problems in real-time.

• A recording of the talk “What do you know about zero knowledge security, in DeFi and elsewhere?” by Dmitry Khovratovich.

• An article “How Tornado Cash Works (Line by Line for Devs)” by Jeffrey Scholz.

Fun of the week 🍩

Thank you for reading the 9th edition of ZK-Roller-Coaster. See you in two weeks! 🚵‍♀️

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