ZK Dive

ZK Dive 3 Highlights - February 2nd, 2024

Our third ZK Dive brought together experts and interested developers in New York City for a day of talks, panels, and discussion on some of the most exciting topics in zero-knowledge proof cryptography today.

Hosted at Fractal Tech Hub in Williamsburg, the event featured talks from industry leaders, including Tracy Livengood from Pluto, David Wong from zkSecurity, and Ismael Hishon-Rezaizadeh from Lagrange Labs.

We were happy to partner with sponsors Reclaim Protocol and Pluto to host this event!

Tracy opened with an exploration of web proofs, demonstrating how they can unlock user data from today's walled-garden internet. He detailed the technical challenges of proving website interactions through TLS connections because the directionality of messages can't be established once the server and client share a session key.

He presented the solutions that Pluto have explored: proxies between client and server, and a notary splitting the key with the client to attest to its validity. He also discussed Pluto's current and future direction for the UX of the project.

David Wong followed with his journey of using AI to enhance ZK circuit audits. Primarily using smart prompt-engineering, as well as static-analysis, fine-tuning, and RAG, David shows how he got better results in finding bugs in Circom code using LLMs.

He also spoke to the current limitations of LLMs in bug detection, the potential for autonomous agent usage for dynamic calls, as well as how to be cost-efficient in terms of model usage.

Lagrange CEO Ismael Hishon-Rezaizadeh then presented an ambitious vision for a proof-based future, describing Lagrange's Zero-Knowledge coprocessor that enables SQL-like queries in smart contracts. He explained how their decentralized proving economy uses specialized markets and auction mechanisms, while highlighting ZK applications beyond blockchain in aerospace, defense, and software supply-chain.

The event culminated in an engaging panel discussion exploring cutting-edge developments in ZK technology. The panelists dove into critical topics including security considerations in ZK systems, the usage of MPC in different parts of ZKP, and formal verification in ZKEVM projects and beyond. The discussion also covered emerging frontiers like ZKML integration and industry funding dynamics, offering valuable insights into both technical innovation and business strategy in the ZK space.