2024 Zero Knowledge Summit: Live Report

On April 10, 2024, the 11th Zero Knowledge Summit was held in Athens. This summit was hosted by the Zero Knowledge podcast and attended by approximately 500 participants, featuring four keynote speeches. Below is a summary of the key points from the summit, covering advancements in the latest zero-knowledge hardware, SNARK performance, and decentralized proof network design.

Zero-Knowledge Hardware

Hardware support has always been an important goal in the field of zero-knowledge proofs. At this summit, several experts conducted in-depth discussions on this topic.

A researcher from a certain foundation provided a comprehensive overview of zero-knowledge hardware and classified related companies. He predicts that with the emergence of hardware-optimized SNARK verification systems and other optimizations, computational overhead could be reduced by 1000 times, which could have a significant impact on future versions of Ethereum. He also mentioned that a competition will be announced for formally validating provers and verifiers, with a prize of up to 20 million dollars.

The co-founder of a certain company introduced their hardware-optimized SNARK verification system, as well as the philosophy of designing both the proof system and the hardware simultaneously. He mentioned that early tests indicated that the hash function Groestl may have advantages over Keccak in certain applications.

Decentralized Prover Network

Many industry insiders envision that the generation of large-scale proofs in the future will be accomplished by a competitive, decentralized market of professional provers.

The co-founder of a certain company discussed various potential mechanism designs for decentralized proof-of-stake networks. She believes the design goals should be, in order: to minimize costs, maximize latency, and ensure censorship resistance. She predicts that issuance/staking models may be effective, but auction models are most likely to prevail, ultimately resembling today's block building.

A PhD student from Yale University introduced a new paper on the economics of proof-of-stake networks. The paper proposes a new mechanism called Proo-phi, aimed at addressing the issue of collusion between provers and bidders in bilateral auctions.

The co-founder and CTO of a certain company discussed the proof market supporting Multi-Party Computation (MPC), particularly how to leverage MPC to maintain privacy between small clients and large provers.

Zero-Knowledge Proof

The meeting also discussed various schemes for building zero-knowledge credentials from the existing identity system.

The co-founder of a certain company introduced a zero-knowledge proof based on email address ownership. This method can be used for various applications, such as remitting funds to an email address or anonymous reporting.

Researchers in a certain laboratory discussed a solution for interacting with traditional web2 identities using OpenID Connect, enabling applications such as remittances to Google or Facebook accounts.

A representative from a certain company discussed how to build anonymous credentials from existing electronic passports, such as proving possession of a specific country's passport and being over a certain age, without disclosing specific personal information.

These discussions demonstrate the broad application prospects of zero-knowledge proof technology in authentication and privacy protection, providing new ideas for future digital identity management.