Keynote: The Universal Cryptographic Adapter

The "secret" third affordance of Zero-Knowledge proof after 1) Privacy and 2) Succinctness is Interoperability. ZK enables us to continuously refactor data, aggregate it from different sources, and transforming it without loosing its integrity. Starting with the Zupass project, and now with the broader adoption of the POD and GPC format, 0xPARC has been exploring using ZK for data sovereignty and creating more interoperable data ecosystem. We will cover our learnings and progress in this talk.

STARK proofs ELI5

Let's face it, ZK proofs are intimidating. But they don't have to be! ZK proofs are complex not because of the depth math they use, but because of the large number of fields of mathematics they leverage features from. In this talk, we'll break down STARK proofs into simple blocks and colorful analogies so that you get a good high level overview of how they work

Keynote: Programmable Cryptography and Ethereum

Programmable Cryptography is a "second generation" of cryptographic primitives - primitives that allow arbitrary programs to be executed "inside of" or "on top of" cryptographic objects. Programmable cryptography provides three key affordances that complement and amplify the affordances of Ethereum--verifiability, confidentiality, and non-interactivity. We'll discuss how these technologies can reshape the Internet over the next 50 years.

Programmable Cryptography and the future of the Internet

You rarely hear of issues at the networking layer of the Internet: networking companies are running utilities business: they are fungible and can be swapped if distrusted. Most of the value captured on the Internet -- and also most abuse -- happen at the Compute and Data layer of the Web. Ethereum gave us a glimpse of a fundamentally different architecture for Compute and Data than Client/Server architecture.We think the Internet is 1/3 complete, and that programmable cryptography can finish it.

Anon-Aadhaar Protocol using Halo2 and Noir

We will introduce the Anon-Aadhaar protocol which is an anonymity layer on top of a social security like Scheme (Aadhaar card) for Indian citizens using Zero-knowledge proofs. This can be used for getting many basic services in India like electricity, banking, etc. We will describe the implementation results of the protocol using Halo2 and Noir. We will also provide a comparative analysis of benchmarks using different backends like Circom, Halo2 and Noir.

Introduction to hash-based proof systems

Over the last decade, ZK has been gaining attention due to its applications in verifiable private computation and the scalability of blockchains. The development of general-purpose zkvms powered with STARK/hash-based proof systems have made writing provable applications simpler, abstracting developers from the details of ZK. In this talk, we will explain the basics of hash-based proof systems, different arithmetization schemes and how to prove computations without needing a trusted setup.

TLSNotary: Applying MPC and interactive ZK to prove web2 data

Diving into TLSNotary, a protocol which leverages multi-party computation and interactive ZK to prove the authenticity and provenance of any data on the web to another party. Summary: 1. What it is and what it can do 2. High-level overview of how it works 3. Details on the underlying MPC and ZK protocols that we use 4. How to use it

Introduction to Multilateral Trade Credit Set-off in MPC

Multilateral Trade Credit Set-off is a process for collecting outstanding invoices from a network of firms and detecting cycles. A cycle is a circular pattern of due payments that connects businesses. Removing a cycle yields liquidity savings for the firms involved. This process is done by a central agency that collects the invoices and performs the netting. Instead, we leverage MPC to perform the set-ff while preserving the privacy of sensitive financial data of the firms

Elliptic curves and SNARKs: past, present and future.

Elliptic curves are used in many proof systems. Some systems (e.g. Bulletproofs) use plain curves (e.g. ed25519). Some (e.g. Groth16, KZG-PLONK) use pairing-friendly curves (e.g. BLS12-381). Some recursive systems require pairing-friendly 2-cycle (e.g. MNT4/6) or 2-chains (e.g. BLS12-377/BW6-761). Some other recursive/folding systems require plain 2-cycle (e.g. Pasta). In this talk we will go through the difference between these curves and why there isn't a silver bullet curve for all scenarios.

Efficient non-native SNARK recursion using bivariate polynomial testing

Efficient SNARK recursion requires switching between pairing friendly elliptic curves. In most optimal approaches these curves would construct a cycle, but there are no such known cycles. Instead, we use non-native arithmetic to brute force the pairing computation at the cycle cut-off. We describe an approach for combining direct field extension with polynomial-based non-native arithmetic. This reduces pairing computation to bivariate polynomial identity testing using Schwartz-Zippel lemma.