ZK-TLV 0x04: on pairings and blockchain privacy

For our fourth Zero-knowledge meetup, we are delighted to welcome you at Google for Startups Campus Israel, Ha-Umanim St 12, Tel Aviv-Yafo, on February, 18th.

This Chapter will feature two privacy researchers, one from Industry and one from Academy!
Ariel Gabizon, a known practitioner of zk-snarks will help us explore some basic math tools and why they have a crucial role in making privacy apps like Zcash practical.
Afterwards, We will have Professor Claudio Orlandi give us easy access to the fascinating world of privacy in blockchains, including all the recent results.

The event is sponsored by the Zcash Foundation. We thank them deeply!
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Schedule:
- 6.30pm: greetings, food and drinks
- 7.00pm:
* Pairings of Elliptic Curves and their role in constructing zk-SNARKs by Ariel Gabizon
* Privacy in Blockchains by Professor Claudio Orlandi

Talks will be given in English.
For more details, here the abstracts and bios of our speakers:
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Title: Pairings of Elliptic Curves and their role in constructing zk-SNARKs

Pairings of elliptic curves are a deep mathematical tool responsible for a lot of the magic in zk-SNARKs.
We will explain their role in making SNARKs practical and take a historical math detour all the way back to Riemann to see the original context in which they were developed.

For most of his career, Ariel has focused exclusively on theoretical computer science, obtaining a PhD from the Weizmann Institute in 2008. A few years ago he discovered the world of bitcoin and blockchain technology, and sees it as a fascinating potential meeting place of beautiful theoretical computer science ideas and real-world applications. Motivated by this, he shifted his focus in 2014 from pure theory into making tools such as Zero-Knowledge proofs more practical and efficient. Notably, he contributed to the original deployment of Zcash and the more recent Sapling upgrade

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Title: Privacy in Blockchains

The distributed nature of blockchains means that data is replicated and available in multiple copies over the network. This is clearly problematic from a privacy point of view, especially when the data stored on the blockchain is of confidential nature, such as financial transactions in cryptocurrencies.
In this talk I will give a high level overview of some recent research projects which address privacy in blockchain technology, with a focus on the cryptographic components.
Some of the results covered in the talk are available on the Cryptology ePrint Archive, Reports 2018/990 and 2018/1105.

Originally from Florence, Italy, Claudio is an Associate Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark on Cryptography, MPC, Zero-Knowledge and Blockchain.

Join the discussion on the zero knowledge facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/800441673459620/