Zero Knowledge

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.

In this episode, Anna and Kobi speak with Benedikt Bünz, Chief Scientist at Espresso Systems and Professor at NYU.
They start with a quick update on Espresso's architecture, its role in delivering fast finality across chains, and the challenges of building high-throughput blockchain infrastructure. The conversation then turns to Benedikt’s recent research on folding schemes, hash-based proof systems such as Arc and Warp, and Golden, a non-interactive distributed key generation protocol for threshold signatures.

The episode later explores Flock, a new proof system for standard hash functions such as Blake3 and SHA-256 that exceeds Ethereum's post-quantum proving targets without relying on specialized hash functions. They conclude by discussing proof system performance, post-quantum cryptography, and the use of AI-assisted development in cryptographic engineering.



Related Links
Bulletproofs — Short Proofs for Confidential Transactions and More
Protostar — Generic Efficient Accumulation/Folding for Special-Sound Protocols
HyperPlonk — Plonk with Linear-Time Prover and High-Degree Custom Gates
Nova — Recursive Zero-Knowledge Arguments from Folding Schemes
Arc — Accumulation for Reed–Solomon Codes
Linear-Time Accumulation Schemes
Golden: Lightweight Non-Interactive Distributed Key Generation
Flock: Fast Proving for Batch Boolean Computations
TensorSwitch — Nearly Optimal Polynomial Commitments from Tensor Codes
Bolt: Faster SNARKs from Sketched Codes
Ligero — Lightweight Sublinear Arguments Without Trusted Setup


Systems and Infrastructure
Espresso Systems Documentation
CAPE (Configurable Asset Privacy for Ethereum)
Monero


Additional Reading
Vitalik Buterin — The Splurge: Post-Quantum Ethereum
Accumulation without Homomorphism
Neo and SuperNeo: Post-Quantum Folding with Pay-Per-Bit Commitments
Espresso’s HotShot: A Consensus Protocol Designed for Rollups








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Read transcript

No main episode this week, but we’ve got an exclusive bonus clip for our zkMesh+ subscribers!
Continuing our conversation from last week, Wyatt Benno (ICME) describes the world of 'vericoding' - the next stage after the era of 'vibecoding.' Vericoding uses formal mathematics to prove that AI code is actually correct and help prevent bugs in AI-written code. We go deep on SMT (Satisfiability Modulo Theories), a decades-old verification technique originally built for cloud infrastructure, and discuss how SMT can now take a plain-English description and mathematically verify that your AI-generated code does exactly what you want it to do.
If you want to hear this bonus clip, please head over to zkMesh and become a paid subscriber! Link to subscribe: https://zkmesh.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Anna and Nico chat with Wyatt Benno, technical founder of ICME Labs. They trace Wyatt’s start into ZK in the ZKHack Discord and Justin Thaler’s study group before diving into ICME’s early work on folding schemes, local proving, and NovaNet.

The conversation then shifts to ICME’s work at the intersection of AI and ZK. Wyatt introduces ICMEPreflight, a ZK-based guardrail tool for AI. They then explore how succinct verification and privacy-preserving proofs can help secure agentic commerce and provide stronger guarantees than existing guardrail approaches.

They also discuss Jolt Atlas, ICME’s zero-knowledge machine learning framework, the connections between ZK and AI and the challenges of scaling ZKML. Finally, Wyatt encourages future advances in ZKML that could unlock privacy and verifiability in AI systems.



Related Links
ICME Labs
Nova: Recursive Zero-Knowledge Arguments from Folding Schemes (2022)
Jolt Atlas: Verifiable Inference via Lookup Arguments in Zero Knowledge (2026)
ZK Podcast:Is ZK dead? Or has it just begun? with the ZK Pod co-hosts 
ZK Podcast:Isogenies with Luca De Feo
ZK Podcast:How ZK inspired AI Watermarking with Miranda Christ
Neo: Lattice-based folding scheme for CCS over small fields and pay-per-bit commitments (2025)
Awesome Folding Schemes Repo by Lurk Labs
Proofs, Arguments, and Zero-Knowledge by Justin Thaler








Smart contracts have lost users billions of dollars to bugs. Zero-knowledge protocols are next. zkSecurity audits the full stack and publishes open research on ZK vulnerabilities. 

Head to zksecurity.xyz to learn more.







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Read transcript

This episode was recorded live at zkSummit14 in Rome. In it, Anna and Nico Mohnblatt hosted the live ‘Quantum Question’ panel which began as an interview, but became something harder to categorize: part seminar, part group therapy, part improv theater, and — depending on the timeline you expect for viable quantum computers — part emergency briefing.

The logistics of the panel were really unusual. The guests were meant to be Justin Drake and Dan Boneh, but Dan’s flight was delayed. And so the panel began with just Justin Drake and the hosts — what someone in the room jokingly described as the highest moderator-to-panelist ratio in zkSummit history. To compensate, the format broke open: researchers from the audience, including Daira-Emma Hopwood from the Zcash team and Jens Groth (author of Groth16), joined the conversation. A park bench materialized in real time.

The conversation veered into the history of quantum computing research, why Shor’s algorithm threatens today’s public-key cryptography and pairing-based SNARKs, fault-tolerant ‘logical qubits’, physical qubit fidelities, and why neutral-atom machines—despite slower cycle times—may be the most practical path to ‘Q-Day.’ The group also debates the rush-to-post-quantum pitfalls, the benefits of lattice-based post-quantum schemes versus hash-based ones, and how hybrid transitions are unfolding in practice. This was a truly chaotic, spontaneous, informative and fun session at zk14 with some great contributors from attendees and community members, we hope you enjoy it!



Related Links
ZK14 - The Quantum Question Panel Video
Episode 391 -lean Ethereum Part 1: Introduction with Justin Drake
Episode 400 - Quantum Advances, Hybrid Signatures and SNARKs to the Rescue with Dan Boneh
Quantum Algorithm Zoo
POSEIDON: A New Hash Function for Zero-Knowledge Proof Systems
Poseidon2: A Faster Version of the Poseidon Hash Function
Securing Elliptic Curve Cryptocurrencies against Quantum Vulnerabilities: Resource Estimates and Mitigations 
Oratomic (Neutral Atoms Startup)
Neo and SuperNeo: Post-quantum folding with pay-per-bit costs over small fields
lean Ethereum 












Check out all the talks from zkSummit14 in Rome on our YouTube channel here.











**If you like what we do:**

* Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree
* Subscribe to our podcast newsletter
* Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm
* Join us on Telegram
* Catch us on YouTube



**Support the show:**

* Patreon
* ETH - Donation address
* BTC - Donation address
* SOL - Donation address
* ZEC - Donation address



Read transcript