Zero Knowledge

This week, Anna and Guillermo are joined by Patrick O'Grady, founder of Commonware. They discuss his journey from Coinbase and Avalanche to building Commonware, a Rust library of composable primitives for blockchain development. They explore Commonware's "anti-framework" philosophy, why it gives developers control over every layer of the stack, and how its modular approach differs from traditional blockchain SDKs.



The conversation then turns to consensus research, examining how changing assumptions around Byzantine fault tolerance have unlocked faster consensus designs. Patrick explains the motivation behind Commonware's new protocols, Minimmit and Multimmit, discusses the influence of Simplex and Solana's Alpenglow, and shares how Commonware combines engineering, research, and cryptography to build the next generation of blockchain infrastructure.



Related Links
Commonware
Minimmit: Fast Finality with Even Faster Blocks
Commonware blog post announcing Minimmit
Simplex Consensus: A Simple and Fast Consensus Protocol 
Commonware docs - Simplex Consensus
Patrick O’Grady’s X Post on Multimmit (July 2026)
Multimmit: Extending Blocks for Faster Finality (draft)
Alpenglow GitHub Progress Updates
Golden: Lightweight Non-Interactive Distributed Key Generation








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In this episode, Anna and Kobi are joined by Alex Hoover, cryptographer and Assistant Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology. They explore Private Information Retrieval (PIR)—a cryptographic primitive that lets users query public databases without revealing what they're looking for.



They trace PIR's evolution from its early theoretical foundations to modern, practical constructions, unpack key variants like batch and keyword PIR, and discuss emerging blockchain applications, from private state queries to Merkle proof generation. They also examine the latest research making PIR increasingly practical, and why it could become a core building block for privacy-preserving systems.



A quick note: Alex mentioned during the interview that preprocessing in SimplePIR is independent of the database. But it is in fact independent of the queried index, and does depend on the database. He asked us to highlight this correction



Related Links
One Server for the Price of Two: Simple and Fast Single-Server Private Information Retrieval
Don’t be Dense: Efficient Keyword PIR for Sparse Databases
The two papers that introduced client-side preprocessing:PPY18
CK20




Piano: Extremely Simple, Single-Server PIR with Sublinear Server Computation 

Simple and Practical Amortized Sublinear Private Information Retrieval using Dummy Subsets 

Plinko: Single-Server PIR with Efficient Updates via Invertible PRFs (builds on Piano and RMS) 

Doubly Efficient Private Information Retrieval and Fully Homomorphic RAM Computation from Ring LWE (LMW23) 

Lower Bounds for PIR with Preprocessing from Blackbox Cryptography









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This week, Anna and Nico are joined by Alex Ozdemir, Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech, to explore the intersection of formal verification and zero knowledge. They begin by revisiting the evolution of the ZK DSL landscape since Alex's last appearance, discussing the rise of ZKVMs, new language tooling, and how his compiler infrastructure project, CirC, has evolved.

The conversation then dives into formal verification and theorem proving, covering SMT solvers, Lean, and zkPi, the first zkSNARK for proofs expressed in Lean. They also discuss compiler correctness, the challenges of verifying cryptographic systems, and why verifiable software will become increasingly important as the industry matures.



Related Links
zkPi: Proving Lean Theorems in Zero-Knowledge 
CirC: Compiler infrastructure for proof systems, software verification, and more 
Kevin Lacker on AI-Assisted Theorem Proving and Acorn 
Building ZK-Powered AI Guardrails with Wyatt Benno
lean Ethereum Part 6: Formal Verification with Alex Hicks 
Groth16, IVC and Formal Verification with Nexus
lean Ethereum




ZK Podcast and Alex Ozdemir
ZK languages with Alex Ozdemir
zkSessions: Alex Ozdemir - The Taxonomy of Circuit Languages
zkStudyClub: Collaborative zkSNARKs (Alex Ozdemir, Stanford University)
zkStudyClub: Unifying Compiler Infrastructure for SNARKs, SMTs, & More w/ Alex Ozdemir (Stanford)
ZK HACK - Introduction to Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) - Alex Ozdemir








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This week, Anna speaks with Sergey Gorbunov, Engineer at Circle, about Arc, Circle’s new EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain, and its approach to a TEE based on-chain privacy. They begin by revisiting Sergey’s journey from Axelar to Circle, reflecting on the evolution of cross-chain infrastructure, the aftermath of the Terra collapse, and how Circle’s acquisition of Interop Labs led to the development of Arc.

The conversation then turns to Arc’s architecture, including its privacy layer, known as the Privacy Sector, and the decision to build it around Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) rather than ZKPs or FHE. Sergey explains the design trade-offs, discussing privacy, composability, enterprise infrastructure, and why he believes TEEs are currently the most practical foundation for programmable private execution.

Related Links
Axelar Network
Arc Privacy Sector: Keeping Blockchain State, Transactions, and Accounts Private and Quantum Safe
Circle’s Post-Quantum Security Roadmap
Arc Documentation 
Arc: An open Layer-1 blockchain purpose-built for stablecoin finance
Sergey’s X Post on the Arc Privacy Sector paper 
Ian Mier’s X Response to the Arc Privacy Sector works








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Last week on the show, we interviewed Benedikt Bünz, Chief Scientist at Espresso Systems and Professor at NYU.

The conversation ran long, so we're releasing some of the extra material as an exclusive clip for zkMesh+ subscribers. We've also included the first five minutes here. In this segment, Anna, Kobi, and Benedikt discuss whether AI poses a genuine threat to the foundations of cryptography.

They explore the 'immune system' metaphor for AI's dual role in security: it can uncover bugs and vulnerabilities, while also strengthening defenses through tools like formal verification. The conversation closes with the question of whether AI could ever break fundamental cryptographic primitives—or even invent new physics to do it.

To hear the full discussion, head to https://zkmesh.substack.com/subscribe and become a paid subscriber.