Definitions, Security and Sumcheck in ZK Systems with Justin Thaler
In this week’s episode, Anna and Guillermo catch up with Justin Thaler, Associate Professor at Georgetown and Research Partner at a16z. The group dive into a handful of points from Justin’s ‘17 Misconceptions about SNARKs’ article, discussing if his views have changed since it was published back in 2023 and whether some points have become common knowledge since the article first rippled through the ZK community. They then dive into his new zkVM Jolt, which was initially described along with Lasso in 2023, but has now been implemented and is open to contributions from the community. Here’s some additional links for this episode:17 misconceptions about SNARKs (and why they hold us back) by Justin Thaler ZK Hack Discord: contains Study Club, Thaler Book Club and more Approaching the 'lookup singularity': Introducing Lasso and Jolt Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing zkStudyClub - Lasso/Jolt (Justin Thaler, Georgetown University/a16z)Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies Book Episode 103: Exploring VDFs with Joseph Bonneau Proofs, Arguments, and Zero-Knowledge by Justin Thaler Episode 261: Proofs, Arguments, and ZKPs with Justin Thaler The MoonMath Manual by Least Authority ZK Hack Whiteboard Sessions Unlocking the lookup singularity with Lasso by Setty, Thaler and WahbyJolt: SNARKs for Virtual Machines via Lookups by Arun, Setty and Thaler Justin Thaler a16z Articles Episode 293: Exploring Security of ZK Systems with Nethermind’s Michał & AlbertFiat-Shamir Security of FRI and Related SNARKs by Block, Garreta, Katz, Thaler, Tiwari and Zając