Episode 286. Aired on July 26, 2023
See full episode on https://zeroknowledge.fm/286-2/


This week, host Anna Rose (https://twitter.com/annarrose) and guests Uma Roy (https://twitter.com/pumatheuma), Zaki Manian (https://twitter.com/zmanian) and Tarun Chitra (https://twitter.com/tarunchitra) recap all things EthCC Paris (https://www.ethcc.io/). This impromptu chat takes a look back at the topics, talks, parties and goings-on of the Paris week and what really caught their attention. Expect some spicy takes, offtopic rambles, inside scoops and more.


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Here’s some additional links for this episode: 

EthCC Links
* EthCC Website (https://www.ethcc.io/) 
* EthCC Side Events (https://www.ethccweek.fr/events/) 
* EthCC Mary Maller - How can we use Zero-Knowledge Proofs in Ethereum? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsNoMKSh2e8&pp=ygUQZXRoY2MgcGFyaXMgMjAyMw%3D%3D) 
* EthCC Vitalik Buterin - a history of account abstraction (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLf8qpOmxQc) 
* EthCC[6] After Movie (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_p4tVaZ85k&pp=ygUQZXRoY2MgcGFyaXMgMjAyMw%3D%3D) 
* EthCC[6] Main Playlist (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PbF5FvHb1E&list=PLM-Xjhvin-uURP4lmYyP0iys2mxq-rCKU) 

Modular Summit Talks
* Modular Summit (https://modularsummit.dev/) 
* Modular Summit Day 2 - Fourier Stage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSaN8poAmr4) 
* Modular Summit Day 1 - Fourier Stage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNGVz-FRjKY&pp=ygUZbW9kdWxhciBibG9ja2NoYWluIHN1bW1pdA%3D%3D) 
* Modular Summit Day 1 - Galois Stage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHyQKCVQTPo) 
* Modular Summit Day 2 - Galois Stage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYH7n4M016A) 

Other Talks and Links
* Episode 285: Intents with Chris Goes from Anoma (https://zeroknowledge.fm/285-2/)
* Gnosis Pay (https://gnosispay.com/) 
* DeFi Security Summit (https://defisecuritysummit.org/) 
* ZK Paris ZK Validator & Geometry Tweet (https://twitter.com/__geometry__/status/1674094444486983681) 
* Research Day 2023 Playlist (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrTmn1_Dm_UpwHsAAyn3L0f2OZUA02YjC) 
* Intent-Based Architectures and Their Risks by Georgios Konstantopoulos (https://www.paradigm.xyz/2023/06/intents) 
* Ethereum DeFi Protocol Beanstalk Hacked for $182 Million—What You Need to Know (https://decrypt.co/98118/ethereum-defi-protocol-beanstalk-hacked-182-million-what-you-need-know)
* Another $103M Disappears From Multichain in Potential ‘Rug Pull’ (https://decrypt.co/148133/multichain-anyswap-rug-pull-hack-103-million-chainalysis) 

 
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zkSummit 10 is happening in London on September 20, 2023! Apply to attend now - (https://9lcje6jbgv1.typeform.com/zkSummit10). Speaker applications close this Friday!


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Polygon Labs (https://polygon.technology/) is thrilled to announce Polygon 2.0: The Value Layer for the Internet (https://polygon.technology/roadmap).

Polygon 2.0 and all of our ZK tech is open-source and community-driven. Reach out to the Polygon community on Discord (https://discord.gg/0xpolygon) to learn more, contribute, or join in and build the future of Web3 together with Polygon! 


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Aleo (https://www.aleo.org) is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.

For questions, join their Discord at (http://aleo.org/discord).


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In this podcast, we will be exploring the latest in 0 knowledge research and the decentralized web, as well as new paradigms that promise to change the way we interact and transact online.

This week, I host a spontaneous catch-up with Uma and Zaki.

Tarun joins us partway through the interview as well.

This was recorded near the end of the ECC Paris Week, and in it we talk about the topics that were discussed at the events, our favorite talks, our favorite parties, and generally what the sentiment is in the space as we round out the week.

Expect some spicy takes, off-topic rambles, inside scoops, and more.

A bottle of fine French champagne may or may not have been polished off during this interview, so hope you enjoy.

Now, before we kick off, the application to attend ZK Summit 10 is now open.

This time around, we will be hosting the event in London.

As always, we aim to bring together the top researchers and engineers working in ZK to share their latest research and new findings.

Check out the show notes for the application form.

Please note spots are limited and only folks who go through the application will be considered to attend.

Now, Tanya will share a little bit about this week's sponsors.

Polygon Labs is thrilled to announce Polygon

Polygon 2.0 makes mass adoption possible by offering users and developers unlimited scalability and unified liquidity.

This mission is fueled by groundbreaking ZK innovations, including a first-of-its-kind ZK-powered interoperability protocol and the next generation of the industry-leading and widely adopted Plancky2 Proving System.

Polygon 2.0 will change the way we experience Web3 by bringing the security and decentralization of Ethereum to the scale and usability of the internet itself.

Polygon 2.0 and all of their ZK tech is open source and community driven.

Reach out to the Polygon community on Discord at discord.gg forward slash 0xpolygon to learn more, contribute or to join in on building the future of Web3 together with Polygon.

Alio is a new Layer 1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.

If you're interested in building private applications, then check out Alio's programming language called Leo.

Leo enables non-cryptographers to harness the power of ZKPs to deploy decentralized exchanges, hidden information games, regulated stablecoins, identity products, and more.

Participate as a developer, apply for a grant, or go for a bug bounty.

Check out alio.org forward slash blog for more info.

You can also find the link in our show notes.

I'm here with Zaki, Uma, and we might have a special guest coming soon to join us.

And we're here in Paris near the end of the Eat CC Paris week.

All right, so let's kick off with a little recap.

We're not quite at the end of the week, but we're far enough in that I think you might have some thoughts on what's been happening here.

So just overall, generally, what's your week been like?

This has been a very sort of intense and chaotic week.

There's a conference, there's like infinite side events, every place by calendar, like 3 simultaneous things I was supposed to be at.

Paris accommodates a large, you know, 10, 000 blockchain people really easily.

I think most people I've talked to have not even been to the conference or maybe don't even have a ticket.

And the side events have been really the highlight, which seems to be always the case.

Yeah, like every, I mean, ECC is an event itself, but I kind of called it the week of it because at this point, I think, even during that four-day period, each day will have, I don't know, like 6, 7 other full-day conferences happening.

Did you get a chance to check out any of the other ones?

Yeah, I went to MEV day, which I thought was a really high quality event.

There was a lot of discussion around like DEX design, intents, the future of like the transaction and MEV supply chain, which is interesting.

And then there was 2 ZK days slash events.

And yeah, those are the ones that I've been to so far.

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of investors also through events is a big thing here.

So like funds that either invest in my projects or I've LP in or like, definitely all had events.

And so it was just, and I like, 1 of the things that like the VCs have figured out is it's actually better if they like throw their events, like parallel to a blockchain event that everyone else is going to.

And so the old thing, which is like, everyone fly to San Francisco for 3 days, or some resort or whatever, It's actually like no 1 really wants to do that anymore.

So like a half day event in parallel to a crypto conference, you can get a lot more in.

That's interesting you say that because we've actually experienced almost the opposite.

Where like we're so exhausted and you then try to tack on some sort of workshop or retreat like where you're actually trying to solve a problem and yeah you're sort of out of it.

I guess it works if you put it beforehand.

Yeah I did a topic specific retreat before.

And then did some investor events sort of in parallel.

Yeah, I think before must be the trick because we've tried in the middle.

Is this your first time coming to the ECC Paris Week?

People really warned me about the weather, but from my understanding this year is really nice.

And I think there's still like a lot of activity going on, like even though I think everyone acknowledges, oh, we're in the bear market, there's still a ton of activity going on, especially at the infra level of the stock.

And there's a ton of people here, and I think a ton of excitement.

It's always very nice to hang out with a bunch of very excited crypto people.

I feel kind of bad for the Parisians, but it's really fun for us.

Yeah, actually, we've really kind of taken over the city, maybe some neighborhoods.

I had a very strange experience yesterday where I was in a taxi that was stuck in traffic.

And there was these people biking by and scooting by.

And at 1 point, I saw Alex G from Matter Labs.

He doesn't know this, but he will maybe now, just like scootering by.

And on the same car ride, I see Merrick from Celo biking by.

And then I get out of the cab, and I see Jenny Pollack just walking through.

Again, Paris has been good because there have been plenty of space and venues and everything for side events.

And also, Umo, what you were just saying about being warned about the weather, I think that was really last year.

Well, 2021, I was here for that, and I didn't find it too wild.

But I did hear about last year's, it was like what, 36 degrees the whole time?

I don't know, what's this, in Fahrenheit?

And you can see it's not like an, I mean, yes, if you're next to the river, it's airy.

I had gone to an event that was in this restaurant that had no air conditioning.

And it must have been 115 degrees Fahrenheit inside.

So this year, everyone was warning everyone, like, oh, why would you go back there?

But to me, this is what Paris in the summer is like in the past when I've been here.

All right, let's crack in then to the themes of Paris.

What are people talking about here this week?

So I think everyone has like a different experience.

Like I sort of crossed the world of like L1s, DeFi, Cosmos, ETH, DeFi, ETH staking.

I've been talking a lot about, you know, financialization of ETH staking yield and like the general ETH staking stack that is being built.

Like where interoperability is going, value capture, and then intents have been, which I'm sure we're gonna talk a lot about, have been, you know, the intent apocalypse is continuing.

By the way, as you describe the scenes that you're in, It reminds me, when I was younger, I was in a lot of different music scenes.

was in like the house scene, the drum and bass scene, the indie rock scene, the electro scene.

This is very dating me to a certain era in time.

And my favorite thing about it was I would like go from party to party in 1 night and it would be like just a different vibe.

Like you're going to these different conferences, different dinners, you get to wear a different hat.

And and so like DeFi has as sort of made a comeback, I think at this point in the year, and it's basically been revived by ETH staking yield and like different things you can do with it.

Staking yield in the past, in, you know, other events this year, like people hadn't really wanted to talk about defy.

It was actually, I've found that like people wanted to talk more about applications in general in Europe than in, in the U S like ETH Prague, it was the same way it was like people were, but it's even more now.

And then like the infrastructure scene is like somewhat distinct from applications, defy, et cetera.

Cause there's sort of this, I mean, I've seen criticism that like, you know, we spent so much time on infrastructure and almost like not enough time on application.

There's like not enough users, not enough things for people to do.

Maybe I'm, maybe I'm not in those circles enough.

I think 1 of the things that's been exciting is just like in Cosmos, a lot of new applications have been launching.

So the application space has gotten a lot more exciting.

I think in general, applications are coming back is like kind of like a theme I would say.

But you know, there's limits to it, right?

Like There's only so many things you can build on top of Eats Staking Yield.

Yeah, I think 1 of the themes I've seen is like, as Zaki mentioned, like staking and then also restaking, like a lot of people are pretty excited about Eigen layer and like what restaking will do and the design space it opens and like the new stuff it brings.

It's also funny being here with Zaki, who's from OG Cosmos, and seeing a lot of those themes and visions around app chains and shared security, but it's all coming to life on Ethereum as well with app roll-ups.

Now everything is basically an L2, every app has their own L2.

And then yeah, you obviously have like shared security with Eigenlair and restaking.

So yeah, how do you feel about that to see like the Cosmos vision, like kind of copy paste it.

Well, my, my vision related to a theorem has always been not to kill a theorem, but to cosmos fi Ethereum, because I've always thought like what a theorem should be is basically cosmos.

But like part of the goal in like building Cosmos is to like lay the rail tracks that like a theory would travel and I think over the last 2 years like we've really seen a theory and start to travel those.

So like I can I kind of view the like roll ups the roll rollup stacks, especially more open source rollup stacks, app rollups, restaking with Angular is like the cosmosification of Ethereum?

And then I think also another interesting theme we've talked a lot about is interoperability, especially in this very multi rollup world, like the interoperability situation is kind of a mess.

Then you'll see, for example, with Cosmos, you guys thought ahead about that, and you put it in protocol called the IBC.

Then I think in the roll-up world, there has also been a lot of talk about putting Interop in protocol because they are starting to realize it will be a huge problem.

And I think you see this with Polygon's ZKEVML2 roadmap where they have this unified liquidity layer for their new pull token across all their rollups.

That's basically going in protocol to their ZKEVM rollup stack.

There's been like some talk or proposal of like doing something similar with like shared validity for OP stack and like maybe other ecosystems but yeah I've heard the words unified liquidity a lot, which I interpret as putting interoperability and protocol.

Yeah, I think the Ethereum people have a lot to learn from the Cosmos experience, which the unified liquidity is not nearly as unified as you think.

It's so funny because you highlight sort of the Cosmos Ethereum connection, but I can't help but also bring up the Polkadot connection because what I see is like 2017, 2018, Polkadot and Cosmos were kind of in a similar space, but they were distinct.

They were really distinct in their vision.

And what I see is like, Ethereum is now both of them.

Like, and Cosmos took on a little bit of, I think the Polkadot with the ICS stuff.

And I think Polkadot took on a little bit of the Cosmos with the XEM stuff.

But then you see all of those ideas being really brought to life with liquidity in Ethereum.

So Cosmos and Polkadot are the same thing now.

Those 2 projects had at their start the vision for this.

In the Ethereum's case, it's like adoption post launch, post being very, very live, but with a lot more mind share.

And I feel like it's, I mean, at least in this snapshot in time, it feels like it's very powerful because you have so many people looking at it and working on it.

But do we think there's also openings for chaos because it's kind of piecemeal?

I mean, unless, I guess the ZK rollup might be,

It shocks and horrifies me that like every single rollup is writing their own bridge contract.

Why is this not the same bridge contract?

And then like the validity or fraud proof piece is just swapped based on like what your rollup is doing.

Conversations about security have been a big part of this for me too.

There's been a lot of industry wide conversations about security is like a huge gating factor also at this event.

And it seems like only a matter of time before there's a major bridge hack in the Ethereum rollup ecosystem.

You know, there's been so many near misses.

Because I think the rollup narrative is all about, oh, this is so much more secure.

Roll-ups architectures enable in a future in which you can have stronger bridges that do more things, that enforce more properties than let's say the like client model of IBC.

But that reality is we are nowhere close to it.

And so I think that the reality is that like, there's a lot of fragility in the cryptography layers of these bridges in the software stack, especially on the ZK side, there's a lot of agility in like the smart contracts.

I'm not sure if you know this, you probably know this, Uma, but I don't know if you know this, Saki, the fact that there's kind of a huge conversation going on right now in ZK about security and that exact thing.

Each 1 of these systems potentially using different systems.

So it's different types of roll-ups, different types of using ZK.

Yes, you're auditing them with a pretty small group of auditors who can even handle this, tools to audit that are still being developed, not quite there.

And they're going to start having a lot of value attached to them.

I'm nervous that there is something that happens in 1 of these EVM, kind of ZK EVM thing, where it's kind of disastrous and it casts shade on the whole scene.

It's definitely something I'm worried about.

And I don't really know what to do about it.

Well, I think Vitalik has a really good pragmatic take on this, which he, I think him and maybe Justin Drake have written about this on ETH Research where they really advocate for two-factor kind of authentication for ZK rollup.

So you have the ZK proof, maybe you've even have multiple proofs And then you also have some sort of te or sgx based solution 1 really interesting thing is I know flashbots is Really interested in using sgx for suave and they're doing a lot of work there.

And so I think they're going to do a lot of work there, and I think SGX will become, I know it's controversial, but in the short term at least, will become a good two-factor SOP gap for a lot of these security issues.

And then I think 1 really nice thing about ZK is that at the end of the day these ZK circuits are just functions, right?

They're like f of X equals Y There's a really clear spec and so compared to a smart contract actually for a ZK circuit You can have many different implementations because the spec is so well specified and it's a pure function.

Whereas like for a DeFi protocol like Euler or something, they're state.

So it's hard to imagine how a 2 factor would really work there.

But for ZK, you can have many different implementations.

I kind of view it as like client diversity.

And I think that's something that also the ZK industry, maybe they're not talking about it a lot.

I've heard it a little bit, but I think will become more prevalent and more important.

So I was actually, I had a conversation recently with an auditor on the show, and we talked about like under constrained ZK systems, which is like, that's a place where a vulnerability can happen, but that sometimes teams will do that because they're sort of like, there's going to be some sort of validator set that's gonna make choices about governance, about upgrades, about stuff like that.

So like, there is some backstop that is supposed to be decentralized, but that, you know, means they can be a little bit more loose and fast with some of the constraint stuff.

I just don't, I don't know if like, that still doesn't make me feel super confident.

I do think as someone who has deployed a ZK protocol to production, like our protocol, or ZK client is running in production, honestly, running it in production feels a lot better to me than having to manage the keys of a multi-sig, because you have that math and cryptography.

So yes, while thinking about circuit security is like stressful, I think the alternative is that, oh, you have like, I don't know, some like maybe 3 out of 5 multi-sig, you have to worry about keeping the keys safe, You have to worry about who has access to your AWS account or wherever you're running it.

You have to worry about not losing the keys.

And so I think compared to the trade-off, actually, like, if you just even viscerally feel it deploying a system, it feels a lot better than just, like, a pure multi-sig.

And I do think, like, it's important to not be purist.

Like, I think it's important to have, like, both kind of like this Validator set plus ZK or like ZK plus as like T plus you know all these methods like security is very additive And I think that's like important to you know be okay with and think it's valuable

I actually want to talk a little bit about the big announcement by Gnosis.

And I know that Succinct is now deployed, right?

It's like there's a number of multi-sig signers, but now Sucinct, a ZK agent, is 1 of them.

Are you also involved in the new product?

I actually don't know too much about GnosisPay.

I think it is like 1 of those applications that we really need, so I'm really excited they're working on it.

And personally, like we use GnosisChain a lot as like our test net, so I really like using the chain.

But yeah, we are involved, Succinct is involved in securing the Gnosis bridge.

And then we help secure that through our ZK-like client.

But yeah, GnosisPay, from my understanding, is like an L2 on top of Gnosis to make it even cheaper.

But yeah, it seems really cool product wise.

Yeah, it's like you and I got kind of like, pilled by GnosisPilled last time

Frederica was telling us all the stuff they were doing.

We're like, how is it that you're doing all of these things?

The infrastructure that they've built is like a, seems like a breakthrough.

Like, the ability to like actually have something that you can use at a payment terminal, like just like, Boop your credit card, boop your phone, and have a signature get relayed through an account abstraction.

You're basically, you're integrating your account abstraction directly into the payment infrastructure, which is just such an amazing piece of infrastructure building from the best infrastructure building team in the game, which is Bednosis.

Maybe themes even like outside of what you normally pay attention to?

I think just it's been so reinforced that L2s are the new thing.

I think in the Ethereum world, like so many people have adopted the OP stack, they're making their own rollups, like especially in the infrastructure world, it just feels more and more consensus that building your own L2 is like the way to go, which is very interesting.

I mean it's been interesting, you know, in 2019 the exchanges, we're all adopting the Cosmos SDK to build their exchange chains.

And now you, now it's this, the story is, you know, mantle and by bit and base both doing op stack

Okay, it is is there but like as we say this all the other big L2 projects, I mean, doesn't ZK sync have a new thing coming out?

all created a Cosmos SDK slash substrate slash whatever, like this building environment framework.

There's a building environment framework.

To roll kit, I guess, falls under that category.

Yes, which brings the Cosmos SDK to Celestia, well, to roll ups in general.

I mean, so that's very much the narrative here.

But, DYDX chain is the other side of this, which is an L2, which was an early adopter of an L2, which said, I've gone to the limits of what we can do in the L2 world, and now we need a Cosmos chain.

Well, also, I think another theme that we haven't talked about is, speaking of the limits of the L2 world, I think there's a lot of DA layers that are popular right now.

Celestia, Avail, I know Espresso I think is also going to make their own DA layer.

And really like the true cost of making a roll up on Ethereum is putting your DA on Ethereum that is the main cost and yeah there's like seems to be a ton of new solutions for DA for these like Villediums that are settled to Ethereum have their off-chain DA which I think is pretty interesting.

What I would say about that, I think another theme that I've seen on this event and in the future in other events this year is the block space surplus theme.

Like you know you have these roll ups as a service, you have these all DA layers, like we can produce petabytes of block space right?

No 1 has a good answer really for like what's going to consume that like the the recurring themes gaming I

mean, it's like something that uses a lot.

Yeah games are gonna come and the games are gonna rescue Rescue us for the box place surplus

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Episode 286 - Paris 2023 Recap with Uma, Zaki and Tarun