Episode 126: Crypto libraries, Zcash's Zebra and contact tracing with Henry de Valence

In this week's episode, we chat with Henry de Valence (https://twitter.com/hdevalence/) from the Zcash Foundation (https://www.zfnd.org/). We discuss what makes for a strong crypto library, some of the work he has been doing at the ZF and he shares an update about the Zebra Zcash client. We also learn about the TCN Coalition (https://github.com/TCNCoalition/TCN), a group he is working with that aims to build and evaluate privacy-preserving contact tracing protocols - an important tool in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
Here are some useful links about things we discussed:
The Zcash Foundation's 2020 Q1 Report (https://www.zfnd.org/blog/q1-report-2020/)
Cosmos Zcash Pegzone research (https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zcash-pegzone)
Desired characteristics and assumptions of a contact tracing system (https://github.com/TCNCoalition/TCN/blob/main/README.md#ideal-functionality-and-trust-assumptions-in-contact-tracing-systems)
DP3T protocol (https://github.com/DP-3T/documents)
Thank you to this week's sponsor Trail of Bits (https://trailofbits.com)
In a recent blog post, ToB announced some important updates to Echidna, their smart contract fuzzer. Echidna is one of the tools that the team at Trail of Bits uses the most in their smart contract audits - it has been used in almost 35% of their smart contract audits over the past two years. Including the audits they did for MakerDAO, 0x, and Balancer.
In this update to the fuzzer, they have streamlined integration with complex Truffle projects and the tool now support smart contracts written in Vyper. Thay have also removed the need to write Echidna-specific tests and can automatically fuzz assert statements in Solidity.
For more about all these new features check out the blog all about it here: https://blog.trailofbits.com/2020/03/30/an-echidna-for-all-seasons/
Thanks again Trail of Bits (https://trailofbits.com).
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In this week's episode, we chat with Henry de Valence from the Zcash Foundation. We discuss what makes for a strong crypto library, some of the work he has been doing at the ZF and he shares an update about the Zebra Zcash client. We also learn about the TCN Coalition, a group he is working with that aims to build and evaluate privacy-preserving contact tracing protocols - an important tool in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

Here are some useful links about things we discussed:

The Zcash Foundation's 2020 Q1 Report

Cosmos Zcash Pegzone research

Desired characteristics and assumptions of a contact tracing system

DP3T protocol

Thank you to this week's sponsor Trail of Bits

In a recent blog post, ToB announced some important updates to Echidna, their smart contract fuzzer. Echidna is one of the tools that the team at Trail of Bits uses the most in their smart contract audits - it has been used in almost 35% of their smart contract audits over the past two years. Including the audits they did for MakerDAO, 0x, and Balancer.

In this update to the fuzzer, they have streamlined integration with complex Truffle projects and the tool now support smart contracts written in Vyper. Thay have also removed the need to write Echidna-specific tests and can automatically fuzz assert statements in Solidity.

For more about all these new features check out the blog all about it here: https://blog.trailofbits.com/2020/03/30/an-echidna-for-all-seasons/

Thanks again Trail of Bits.

If you like what we do:

Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm

Join us on Telegram

Give us feedback! https://forms.gle/iKMSrVtcAn6BByH6A

Support our Gitcoin Grant

Support us on the ZKPatreon

Or directly here:

ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a

BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz

ZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ