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  • Exploring the Lasers that Power Quantum Computers

    Exploring the Lasers that Power Quantum Computers
    2026/10/07
    This week, Anna and Guillermo chat with Josh Yang, CEO and co-founder of Brightlight Photonics, about the lasers that power quantum computers. Josh explains how lasers are used in neutral atom and other atom-based quantum systems to cool and move atoms, manipulate qubit states and read out results. They explore why these systems require so many different lasers and how today’s bulky, expensive optical setups can become a bottleneck as quantum computers scale. They also cover Brightlight’s work miniaturising the Ti:sapphire laser, a longstanding workhorse of quantum optics. Josh explains how integrated waveguides and semiconductor manufacturing techniques make this possible, the challenges of packaging and powering these tiny lasers, and how a more compact, versatile laser platform could better support quantum computing. This one is a departure from the usual topics covered on the show, but we hope you find it as fascinating as we did. Related Links
    • Brightlight Photonics
    • Josh Yang Google Scholar Profile
    • Episode 357: Quantum Engineering with Jelena Vučković
    • Stanford Report: Chip-scale titanium-sapphire laser puts powerful technology in reach
    • Titanium:Sapphire-on-insulator for broadband tunable lasers and high-power amplifiers on chip
    • Titanium:sapphire-on-insulator integrated lasers and amplifiers
    • Multi-dimensional data transmission using inverse-designed silicon photonics and microcombs
    • Brightlight Photonics Images shared by Josh Yang
    • Episode 400: Quantum Advances, Hybrid Signatures and SNARKs to the Rescue with Dan Boneh
    • Episode 402: The Quantum Question Panel – Live from zkSummit14

    **If you like what we do:** * Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree * Subscribe to our podcast newsletter * Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm * Join us on Telegram * Catch us on YouTube **Support the show:** * Patreon * ETH - Donation address * BTC - Donation address Read transcript
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    1 時間 15 分
  • JP Aumasson on Quantum Risk, AI Attacks and Too Much Crypto

    JP Aumasson on Quantum Risk, AI Attacks and Too Much Crypto
    2026/09/30
    This week, Anna, Tarun and Nico are joined by JP Aumasson, co-designer of BLAKE3, author of Serious Cryptography and cryptography engineer at Cloudflare. They revisit the quantum threat to cryptography, looking at recent advances in quantum attacks on RSA and elliptic-curve cryptography, and discuss why JP remains cautious about predictions of an imminent “Q-day.” They then explore how AI is changing cryptanalysis, from recent RSA factoring records to the growing divide between symmetric and asymmetric cryptography. The conversation then turns to Poseidon and recent attacks that have challenged confidence in ZK-friendly hash functions, as well as China’s new NGCC competition, where AI is already being used to find weaknesses in candidate designs. JP shares his experiments using AI for cryptanalysis, why it could accelerate both the building and breaking of cryptographic systems, and a introduces a project exploring AI-driven attacks on hash functions. Related Links
    • Too Much Crypto by Jean-Philippe Aumasson
    • Securing Elliptic Curve Cryptocurrencies against Quantum Vulnerabilities: Resource Estimates and Mitigations
    • Flock: Fast Proving for Batch Boolean Computations
    • Flock Challenge
    • POSEIDON: A New Hash Function for Zero-Knowledge Proof Systems (Updated Version)
    • Ngcc.dev
    • Chinese NGCC Algorithms: The First Week of AI Cryptanalysis
    • JP Aumasson Papers
    • Yukon.org
    • ZK Podcast Episode: The Quantum Question Panel – Live from zkSummit14!
    • ZK Podcast Episode: Quantum Advances, Hybrid Signatures and SNARKs to the Rescue with Dan Boneh

    Sovright builds the critical infrastructure that preserves your right to choose. Discover more at sovright.com. **If you like what we do:** * Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree * Subscribe to our podcast newsletter * Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm * Join us on Telegram * Catch us on YouTube **Support the show:** * Patreon * ETH - Donation address * BTC - Donation address Read transcript
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    57 分
  • Auto Research on Yukon with Soubhik Deb

    Auto Research on Yukon with Soubhik Deb
    2026/09/23
    This week, Anna is joined by Soubhik Deb, Head of Research at EigenLabs, to explore Yukon, a platform for collaborative AI-powered research. Soubhik traces the project’s origins to ECDSA.fail, a competition launched in response to Google’s work on more resource-efficient quantum circuits for breaking secp256k1. They discuss how researchers and their AI agents build on one another’s submissions, turning traditional research into a multiplayer process that can iterate at machine speed. The conversation then explores Yukon’s expansion into ZK proving, inference optimisation, coding theory and mathematics through challenges like SNARK.fast, better.codes, mlx.fast and lighter.fast. Soubhik explains the importance of well-defined problems and verifiers for AI-driven research, and shares Yukon’s vision for an “AI-native scientific institution” where humans and agents collaborate to accelerate discovery. Related Links
    • Yukon.org
    • ECDSA.fail
    • Flock Challenge
    • The Proximity Prize (better.codes)
    • Mlx.fast
    • Darkbloom
    • Lighter Prover Challenge
    • ECDSA.Fail: Open Autoresearch for Optimizing Elliptic-Curve Point Addition in Shor’s Algorithm
    • Optimized Point Addition Circuits for Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithms
    • Securing Elliptic Curve Cryptocurrencies against Quantum Vulnerabilities: Resource Estimates and Mitigations
    • ZK Podcast Episode: The Quantum Question Panel – Live from zkSummit14!
    • ZK Podcast Episode: Quantum Advances, Hybrid Signatures and SNARKs to the Rescue with Dan Boneh

    Sovright builds the critical infrastructure that preserves your right to choose. Discover more at sovright.com. **If you like what we do:** * Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree * Subscribe to our podcast newsletter * Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm * Join us on Telegram * Catch us on YouTube **Support the show:** * Patreon * ETH - Donation address * BTC - Donation address Read transcript
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    1 時間 7 分
  • Ron Rothblum on Fiat-Shamir Attacks, Flock and SNARK.fast

    Ron Rothblum on Fiat-Shamir Attacks, Flock and SNARK.fast
    2026/09/16
    This week, Anna and Kobi are joined by Ron Rothblum, Professor of Computer Science at Technion and researcher at Succinct. They catch up on Ron’s move from theory into practice, including his work on the SP1 zkVM, Jagged Polynomial Commitments, and a recent Fiat-Shamir attack that exposed vulnerabilities in practical uses of GKR. Ron explains what the attack revealed about Fiat-Shamir’s security assumptions and why it prompted changes to deployed systems. The conversation then explores Ron’s recent work on faster and more efficient proof systems, from Blaze, TensorSwitch, BOLT and Veil to Flock, a proof system for batch proving Boolean computations. They discuss how new approaches to polynomial commitments and error-correcting codes can improve prover performance, before turning to snark.fast and ZK-Golf, experiments using AI agents to optimise provers and circuits. Ron shares what these efforts reveal about AI-assisted research and engineering, and how pushing proving closer to the speed of ordinary computation could unlock entirely new applications for verifiable computation. Related Links
    • Jagged Polynomial Commitments (or: How to Stack Multilinears)
    • The Random Oracle Methodology, Revisited
    • Blaze: Fast SNARKs from Interleaved RAA Codes
    • TensorSwitch: Nearly Optimal Polynomial Commitments from Tensor Codes
    • Flock: Fast Proving for Batch Boolean Computations
    • VEIL: Lightweight Zero-Knowledge for Hash-Based Multilinear Proof Systems
    • Bolt: Faster SNARKs from Sketched Codes
    • zkGolf Website
    • Proving as Fast as Computing: Succinct Arguments with Constant Prover Overhead
    • SNARK.fast Website
    • ZK Podcast Episode: Error Correcting Codes & Information Theory with Ron Rothblum
    • Fiat-Shamir via List-Recoverable Codes (or: Parallel Repetition of GMW is not Zero-Knowledge)
    • Delegating Computation: Interactive Proofs for Muggles
    • How to Prove False Statements: Practical Attacks on Fiat-Shamir

    **If you like what we do:** * Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree * Subscribe to our podcast newsletter * Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm * Join us on Telegram * Catch us on YouTube **Support the show:** * Patreon * ETH - Donation address * BTC - Donation address Read transcript
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    1 時間 2 分
  • The Evolution from ZKP2P to Peer with Richard Liang

    The Evolution from ZKP2P to Peer with Richard Liang
    2026/09/09
    This week, Anna catches up with Richard Liang from Peer, formerly ZKP2P. They trace the project’s evolution over the past two years, from their initial ZKP2P product that used ZK email proofs to connect Venmo payments with on-chain USDC, to their use of ZK TLS, and most recently, their move to using TEEs (trusted execution environments) and the rebrand to Peer. Richard breaks down what motivated each shift and how the team has navigated the trade-offs around privacy, speed, and UX. The conversation then explores Peer’s current approach to connecting traditional payment platforms and stablecoins, including why “ephemeral privacy” makes TEEs a compelling fit for their use case and what the move away from ZK has unlocked. Richard and Anna also reflect on the broader evolution of ZK from an experimental technology into infrastructure that increasingly underpins real world applications. Finally, they discuss Peer’s expansion into payments, its ambitions to support more currencies and fintech platforms around the world, and how AI is changing both the team’s development process and the possibilities for agentic payments. Related Links
    • Peer X Profile
    • Peer Pay X Profile
    • Peer Website
    • Announcement of ZKP2P becoming Peer
    • Peer Docs Repo
    • ZK Podcast: ZKP2P with Brian and Richard
    • ZK Hack Lisbon 2023
    • ZK Email
    • ZK Podcast: Is ZK dead? Or has it just begun? With the ZK Pod co-hosts

    **If you like what we do:** * Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree * Subscribe to our podcast newsletter * Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm * Join us on Telegram * Catch us on YouTube **Support the show:** * Patreon * ETH - Donation address * BTC - Donation address Read transcript
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    46 分
  • Minimmit, Multimmit and the New Consensus Frontier with Patrick O'Grady

    Minimmit, Multimmit and the New Consensus Frontier with Patrick O'Grady
    2026/08/05
    This week, Anna and Guillermo are joined by Patrick O'Grady, founder of Commonware. They discuss his journey from Coinbase and Avalanche to building Commonware, a Rust library of composable primitives for blockchain development. They explore Commonware's "anti-framework" philosophy, why it gives developers control over every layer of the stack, and how its modular approach differs from traditional blockchain SDKs. The conversation then turns to consensus research, examining how changing assumptions around Byzantine fault tolerance have unlocked faster consensus designs. Patrick explains the motivation behind Commonware's new protocols, Minimmit and Multimmit, discusses the influence of Simplex and Solana's Alpenglow, and shares how Commonware combines engineering, research, and cryptography to build the next generation of blockchain infrastructure. Related Links
    • Commonware
    • Minimmit: Fast Finality with Even Faster Blocks
    • Commonware blog post announcing Minimmit
    • Simplex Consensus: A Simple and Fast Consensus Protocol
    • Commonware docs - Simplex Consensus
    • Patrick O’Grady’s X Post on Multimmit (July 2026)
    • Multimmit: Extending Blocks for Faster Finality (draft)
    • Alpenglow GitHub Progress Updates
    • Golden: Lightweight Non-Interactive Distributed Key Generation

    **If you like what we do:** * Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree * Subscribe to our podcast newsletter * Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm * Join us on Telegram * Catch us on YouTube **Support the show:** * Patreon * ETH - Donation address * BTC - Donation address Read transcript
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    1 時間 12 分
  • Private Information Retrieval (PIR) with Alex Hoover

    Private Information Retrieval (PIR) with Alex Hoover
    2026/07/29
    In this episode, Anna and Kobi are joined by Alex Hoover, cryptographer and Assistant Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology. They explore Private Information Retrieval (PIR)—a cryptographic primitive that lets users query public databases without revealing what they're looking for. They trace PIR's evolution from its early theoretical foundations to modern, practical constructions, unpack key variants like batch and keyword PIR, and discuss emerging blockchain applications, from private state queries to Merkle proof generation. They also examine the latest research making PIR increasingly practical, and why it could become a core building block for privacy-preserving systems. A quick note: Alex mentioned during the interview that preprocessing in SimplePIR is independent of the database. But it is in fact independent of the queried index, and does depend on the database. He asked us to highlight this correction Related Links
    • One Server for the Price of Two: Simple and Fast Single-Server Private Information Retrieval
    • Don’t be Dense: Efficient Keyword PIR for Sparse Databases
    • The two papers that introduced client-side preprocessing:
      • PPY18
      • CK20

    • Piano: Extremely Simple, Single-Server PIR with Sublinear Server Computation
    • Simple and Practical Amortized Sublinear Private Information Retrieval using Dummy Subsets
    • Plinko: Single-Server PIR with Efficient Updates via Invertible PRFs (builds on Piano and RMS)
    • Doubly Efficient Private Information Retrieval and Fully Homomorphic RAM Computation from Ring LWE (LMW23)
    • Lower Bounds for PIR with Preprocessing from Blackbox Cryptography

    **If you like what we do:** * Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree * Subscribe to our podcast newsletter * Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm * Join us on Telegram * Catch us on YouTube **Support the show:** * Patreon * ETH - Donation address * BTC - Donation address Read transcript
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    1 時間 4 分
  • Alex Ozdemir on where Theorem Provers and ZK meet

    Alex Ozdemir on where Theorem Provers and ZK meet
    2026/07/15
    This week, Anna and Nico are joined by Alex Ozdemir, Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech, to explore the intersection of formal verification and zero knowledge. They begin by revisiting the evolution of the ZK DSL landscape since Alex's last appearance, discussing the rise of ZKVMs, new language tooling, and how his compiler infrastructure project, CirC, has evolved. The conversation then dives into formal verification and theorem proving, covering SMT solvers, Lean, and zkPi, the first zkSNARK for proofs expressed in Lean. They also discuss compiler correctness, the challenges of verifying cryptographic systems, and why verifiable software will become increasingly important as the industry matures. Related Links
    • zkPi: Proving Lean Theorems in Zero-Knowledge
    • CirC: Compiler infrastructure for proof systems, software verification, and more
    • Kevin Lacker on AI-Assisted Theorem Proving and Acorn
    • Building ZK-Powered AI Guardrails with Wyatt Benno
    • lean Ethereum Part 6: Formal Verification with Alex Hicks
    • Groth16, IVC and Formal Verification with Nexus
    • lean Ethereum

    ZK Podcast and Alex Ozdemir
    • ZK languages with Alex Ozdemir
    • zkSessions: Alex Ozdemir - The Taxonomy of Circuit Languages
    • zkStudyClub: Collaborative zkSNARKs (Alex Ozdemir, Stanford University)
    • zkStudyClub: Unifying Compiler Infrastructure for SNARKs, SMTs, & More w/ Alex Ozdemir (Stanford)
    • ZK HACK - Introduction to Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) - Alex Ozdemir

    **If you like what we do:** * Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree * Subscribe to our podcast newsletter * Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm * Join us on Telegram * Catch us on YouTube **Support the show:** * Patreon * ETH - Donation address * BTC - Donation address * SOL - Donation address * ZEC - Donation address Read transcript
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    1 時間 2 分