Episode 76: Sean Bowe on SNARKs, Trusted Setups & Elliptic Curve Cryptography

In this week’s episode, we welcome special guest Sean Bowe. Sean is an engineer at the Electric Coin Company (https://twitter.com/zcashco) and the author of the Sprout and Sapling Zcash trusted set ups and much of the underlying cryptography of the protocol. We had a chance to chat about his history, what got him into the topic, some of the joys & challenges to working with SNARKs, and what ideas are inspiring him.
We also covered the story of Zcash and the Powers of Tau trusted set up, MPCs, the story of the bug, SONICs (https://eprint.iacr.org/2019/099.pdf), ZEXE (https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/962), the BLS12-381 Elliptic Curve Construction (https://z.cash/blog/new-snark-curve/)
Early on in the episode, we mention the Radiolab episode about the zcash trusted setup: https://archive.org/details/radiolabpodcast17cryptozcash_ceremony
Questions from the audience: https://twitter.com/AnnaRRose/status/1122818062061797376
We also mention some of our previous ZK centric episodes that can be found here: https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/zkseries
Special thanks to this week's sponsor: Trail of Bits (https://www.trailofbits.com/)
Trail of Bits is offering a service for young technology companies who could use expert security support, but aren't quite at a stage to hire their own team. The service includes staffing a #security channel to answer questions, review high risk PRs, and integrate the latest in continuous testing into your build pipeline. Visit www.trailofbits.com for help securing your product.
If you like what we do:
Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm (https://twitter.com/zeroknowledgefm)
Join us on Telegram - https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjA
Support our Gitcoin Grant - https://gitcoin.co/grants/38/zero-knowledge-podcast
Support us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge
Or directly here:
ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a
BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz
ZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ

In this week’s episode, we welcome special guest Sean Bowe. Sean is an engineer at the Electric Coin Company and the author of the Sprout and Sapling Zcash trusted set ups and much of the underlying cryptography of the protocol. We had a chance to chat about his history, what got him into the topic, some of the joys & challenges to working with SNARKs, and what ideas are inspiring him.

We also covered the story of Zcash and the Powers of Tau trusted set up, MPCs, the story of the bug, SONICs, ZEXE, the BLS12-381 Elliptic Curve Construction

Early on in the episode, we mention the Radiolab episode about the zcash trusted setup: https://archive.org/details/radiolab_podcast17crypto_zcash_ceremony

Questions from the audience: https://twitter.com/AnnaRRose/status/1122818062061797376

We also mention some of our previous ZK centric episodes that can be found here: https://www.zeroknowledge.fm/zkseries

Special thanks to this week's sponsor: Trail of Bits

Trail of Bits is offering a service for young technology companies who could use expert security support, but aren't quite at a stage to hire their own team. The service includes staffing a #security channel to answer questions, review high risk PRs, and integrate the latest in continuous testing into your build pipeline. Visit www.trailofbits.com for help securing your product.

If you like what we do:

Follow us on Twitter - @zeroknowledgefm

Join us on Telegram - https://t.me/joinchat/B_81tQ57-ThZg8yOSx5gjA

Support our Gitcoin Grant - https://gitcoin.co/grants/38/zero-knowledge-podcast

Support us on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/zeroknowledge

Or directly here:

ETH: 0xC0FFEE1B5083230a5154F55f253B6b6ae8F29B1a

BTC: 1cafekGa3podM4fBxPSQc6RCEXQNTK8Zz

ZEC: t1R2bujRF3Hzte9ALHpMJvY8t5kb9ut9SpQ