all right thanks so much Teresa um for
introducing us and welcome to the panel
on consumer apps um built with CK MPC
and FHA I'm also super excited about
this panel here um how I'm thinking of
these projects is we have two of them
that actually buil Primitives so ZK
email and tesso they're building sort of
libraries and tools and then we have two
of them who built on top of them so we
have ZK PDP that built on Z Emil and
then cursive which uses teso as well as
mpf so this is a really good
representation across the stack and
we'll have I have lots of questions for
you guys um so I want to first start
with an intro can we get um ZK email ZK
PTP too and cursive in that order yeah
sweet um yeah I'm aush I work a bunch on
ZK email the idea is you make proofs of
emails in your inbox or emails you've
sent and these can get proved on chain
um we've thought a lot about what are
both the interesting apps you can build
and what is the best kind of Def toing
to do that um and on the side I also
like thinking about mpcf and things like
that so happy to also jump in there cool
uh I'm Richard I work on ZK P2P uh we
build P2P marketplaces that connect web
2 assets and uh like digital Goods with
web 3 uh like smart contracts uh in
particular we have like a P2P like onoff
ramp uh so basically you can uh send
money from VMO and use that to trade
directly for usdc on chain and that's
powered by ZK email um as the source of
proving that you've sent that VMO
payment and among other things we've
also launched a couple I guess different
marketplaces for trading tickets and
trading domains on the secondary
marketpl uh hello my name is Ash I'm
from T we build uh tooling and networks
to build and deploy MPC based
applications um in particular coars
which is what uh cursive are using and
you heard a lot about this week it was
the first week that it's live so we're
very excited and my role there I care a
lot about privacy and so I think about
how using these tools in the real world
actually affects the lives of the people
using them cool uh my name is Andrew I
work at cursive and cursive is exploring
different ways for cryptography to
enable new forms of human connection so
specific C uh certain things that we're
exploring are like multiparty FHA
uh looking at karks uh with t and also
like new MPC Primitives that we're like
super excited about as well very cool um
I want to start us off with a high level
question because you guys are building
in a paradigm that is very new um and a
different from most consumer apps that
we're used to and I'm wondering um what
are some application design patterns
that um are unlocked by the
cryptographic Primitives and I want to
address this sort of like in in like
ascending order so in my mind like ZK is
the like most basic primitive followed
by MPC Co narts followed by MP FH so
let's go in that order like what are
some design patterns um that are
unlocked for you and give us examples um
from some of your favorite
apps let's start with ZK email yeah yeah
I guess we've seen two main ways people
design applications that I think are
different than everything we've seen
before one is around proof ofed emails
so that's kind of the stuff that Richard
and zbp can contribute to but it's very
interesting now that it's very easy to
make these proofs um people are kind of
starting to compose them so one example
is you can prove you're part of a slack
workspace by using any slack
confirmation or invitation email and
then also prove you for instance took a
flight on United and you ended up at
Thailand and now you can automatically
build a system where everybody in your
slack worksspace automatically gets
reimbursed for their flight to Thailand
and it's kind of interesting because
you're not just using one proof you're
combining all sorts of different proofs
and just because it's very easy to build
each sort of proof you can build these
new applications that take multiple
facets of your identity into account and
so that's one that I've been really
excited by by seeing
um we've also seen um on the side of
using emails to send transactions people
kind of hot swapping almost emails and
ethereum accounts in their application
so for instance multi signers can just
be an email instead of an ethereum
address and it's kind of interesting
seeing okay once that's really easy to
do then people start being able to
expand their apps to all sorts of new
kinds of users so um I think those are
the two and I think we've seen over the
last few years the design evolve more
into uh this being almost TurnKey for
developers instead of like ZK PP which
had to slog through like months of The
Primitives of getting it up to speed but
we learned a ton from that yeah I'm
curious what your takes are though yeah
I think for us at ZK PDP we're
particularly focused and excited about
the idea of bringing web2 data and using
that like all across um blockchains
especially I think if you think about
like web 2 um all the data currently
exists in these like centralized data
silos like it's you you basically can't
export them to use anywhere else think
of like your Facebook follow or your
Facebook friends you can't just take
that and use it um on Twitter for
example right and some of these like ZK
Primitives allow you and I guess also
like NPC with like TLS notary um allow
you to kind of permissionless export uh
these web2 like data from these like
silos and use that anywhere uh you want
and we're particularly excited about
like putting these on chain uh because
of this like Global like incredibly
neutral settlement layer that you can do
like really cool stuff and composable
stuff
with who go who goes with coars you are
using them I can go General Pur see well
you built them I think I mean with coars
and NPC for coars I think one of the
nicest examples is actually what you are
doing and this is essentially doing
private proof delegation so with zero
knowledge proofs if you want to generate
a proof where um like the witness gets
particularly big and you're doing it
client side and maybe it's your phone is
not uh powerful enough or you don't have
enough time to do it on your phone you
might want to Outsource it and so you
see all these proof markets popping up
that offer services that you know can
generate your proofs for you but if you
have any notion of privacy at all or if
you care about about the witness data
and not leaking this in the clear to
everybody then you might want to do this
in a privacy preserving way and I think
this is where coars enter their story so
doing yeah private Pro like proof
delegation but maintaining privacy in an
mpca I think is the one real sort of
awesome use case that uh coars offer
that wouldn't be possible otherwise so
like in New is now you don't do proof
generation on the phone you Outsource it
to the network and then I think for
general purpose MPC um I think the thing
for me this is the most exciting part
because there you start to now be able
to collaborate on private data across
multiple users so I think ZK is great in
the sense that it gives you like this um
sort of control over your data but in a
way it restricts you because it's like
okay I have control over my data but now
it's stuck and uh I can't share it with
you and sometimes I want this sort of
flexibility I don't want this all or
nothing and so if I have this
flexibility to say okay I can share it
with you and you and you or I can share
something about it with you and you and
you and we can compute over it together
um then this is great so for me this is
like the real kind of new thing that's
opened up by using APC in a in a ZK
world let's see yeah so I personally
feel like ZK by itself is quite lame for
the use cases that we're thinking about
which is social applications like I feel
like social is inherently like
multiplayer you want to get like a bunch
of people involved and the coolest
applications there involve multiple
people's private information and for
that MPC is a perfect fit so I would say
for coars the thing that's more exciting
um to me personally is the idea that you
can actually generate proofs about a
group's data so it's like the other side
of the coin and I think in general like
MPC FHA all of these things uh cool
applications or design patterns or like
uh one thing that we're trying to
explore is asking questions to your
social graph asking private questions
specifically so one setup here is that
like Richard could like have his like
private data uploaded in some like
encrypted form or whatnot and I can just
like ask certain queries or I can ask
questions like hey like who here wants
to join the hackathon with me like does
anyone in my social graph meet these
criteria and wants to like be part of
this group um and these queries would
only be decrypted if they're actually uh
satisfying that criteria so I think like
the MPC FHA angle feels a little more
exciting for
that absolutely I wanted to also so this
interesting theme sort of came up about
making connections so from web 2 to web
3 um from one note to another in your
social
gr and it's also kind of making
connections between The Primitives like
coars is a good example mpf is a good
example so one question that's always at
the the top of my mind is security and
how security assumptions
compose both across Primitives so what
are so you are introducing new
cryptographic assumptions how do these
compose um and also across applications
and in that case it's more about threat
modeling so for example if you're
relying on say the Vanos email format um
and they Chang it let's say um or yeah
you're um relying on like uh some dkim
servers some registry like how did the
threat models um compose um so I'm still
curious as designers how you reason
about that first of all and also how you
communicate it to your users how you
educate your users about
it all right I'll go first um so I think
think because ZK PDP uh is building like
a financial application if you will uh
we're dealing with like movement of I
guess stable coins on chain so there is
real value tied to it uh we do like
treat security pretty seriously U both
on the cryptographic side and on the
application side um I think on the I I
guess overall we see like security as
kind of like how comfortable are we like
securing like this dollar amount over
this amount of hours for example uh and
I guess like different Primitives uh
that we use uh I think fall under
different parts of that Spectrum uh for
example like email may not be I guess
the most I guess um like yeah like gated
and secured uh for example whereas like
behind like a gated like private API
with 2fa and everything um uh yeah the
data might be more secure so I think we
do account for all of that in like how
much we allow like the max transaction
limit uh to be in some of these
protocols and I think yeah I think we're
constantly monitoring and seeing as
these Technologies mature uh we feel
more confident uh confident on it
securing uh higher dollar
amounts yeah I can also address trust
assumptions on the ZK email side
I guess we think about this in two ways
one is around when things update so you
say your email template updates or the
de registry updates it's one very easy
to change that so we have a very simple
Builder where you put in the new format
or the new pars thing and it
automatically handles everything for you
and so one thing is okay when a template
changes the developer's ability to react
should be extremely fast and then number
two is we kind of want to make sure the
system is robust to any weird kinds of
like bugs or malicious DM key updates
and so one way we think about this for
instance with email based account
recovery where it really matters like
the entire security of your account
hinges on you know it really shouldn't
hinge on will this recovery module get
hacked and so one thing we think about
is like very intentional time locks and
kill switches so for instance uh like
many of these accounts will have uh once
all the emails say hey I should recover
this account to this new address a onewe
time lock starts that's non-negotiable
on chain and so even if either the email
server got hacked or the DM key got
somehow maliciously rotated or even like
uh you know the users Guardians acted
against their own will then at least the
account owner has a week to repair that
and so I think non-negotiable timel has
also been quite compelling and the final
thing is giving users the ability to
exit so for instance for the deim keys
if a user doesn't trust hey these
oracles they've set for the dkim keys
are are going to always act correctly
we've made it so that us users can say
look I have to approve all dick key
rotations that are applied to my account
and so now we kind of show you know in
the maybe in the ux hey uh confirm your
guardian emails and the relevant keys
and the user just uh kind of does say
some pass key authorization and that'll
automatically check okay I'm going to do
the DNS check did the DM Keys match okay
I'm going to rotate them on chain for
this user specifically so allowing users
to have control over their own Keys
within an intuitive manner I think is
also quite important so yeah these are
the three ways easy updates um having it
so that there's non-negotiable time
lockss and giving users control over
their own keys or parts or oracles that
they don't have to trust
it yeah sure uh for MPC and FHA security
is generally a lot more difficult like
there's been so much money being put
into ZK Audits and all these rollups and
everything that like people know how to
audit circuits very well um and for MPC
fhe this is maybe becoming more of like
a nent thing so we'll see how that
progresses I think there are certain
things you can do to make MPC FHA more
secure one way to look at it is there's
this notion of Direct Security versus
delegated Security in NPC so delegated
security is when you take your private
data and you split it up and you give it
to all the NPC parties and they run this
computation versus Direct Security is
you are actually running this
computation yourself and you are one of
the parties when you actually want to
run compute over your own data and
that's like a simple way to say oh it's
your own data you should be a part of
the computation and I think that
simplifies part of the equation or some
of the threat assumptions but I think
for for MPC MPG as a whole like we're
still trying to work this
out maybe I can add something on like I
think you talked very nicely about the
composability but maybe I can try to say
how this translates to users and I think
to end users in particular like now we
start to hear that like oh people do
start to care about privacy and like
okay yeah we do have stuff to hide so
people do start to feel something about
privacy y but I think they really don't
understand like the Nuance or even the
language around it so like explaining to
end users like consumers that we're
talking about now is
just hard and like uh but even like for
us now we start to kind of onboard
developers to use MPC Tooling in the
network and it's like even to developers
it's really hard to explain and I think
a lot of developers even have like a lot
of confusion around the security
assumptions and like it's actually a
little bit worrying and I so like we and
as you said like there's no auditing and
like this little sort of support to for
security in MPC and FHA and the slight
slightly more advanced Primitives so at
least we talk a lot I mean like all of
us talk a lot um to each other about
like okay are we right in thinking this
and like with you I was talking about
private proof delegation and I was
saying like Okay just Outsource
everything and you were like okay no
we're happy to Outsource some stuff
maybe but like if there's like a
whistleblower or something that's you
know particularly sensitive or you know
then know like everything needs to be
done client side so I think having
conversations amongst each other to like
raise the general bar of Education like
e either amongst consumers and the
developers and like the researchers and
everyone um yeah generally just raising
the level of Education I think is good
and that's what we do and try to yeah
inform each other
I love that I think a lot of since we're
building at a very early stage a lot of
it is about talking to each other and
communicating well communicating like in
an intuitive way to users um so to that
and I I want to sort of find out like
some practical insights that you've
gained from your experiences deploying
these apps in the wild so by practical I
mean like insights that you could not
have gained from like just writing a
white paper um just implementing it on
in a hackathon for example um ux
features like I use um making it clear
to the users that they can control the
set of De key stes um so like ux prompts
how these Q behaviors in users I'm
interested in that and um I'm also
interested in s of how we compensate for
the ux hit so a lot of these apps um
they involve heavy computations right uh
for example making a ZK proof for
example having to be online for a long
time um for the MPC or FH well not for
FH but yeah um so having to wait for a
long time be online for a long time like
these are ux hits that we have to take
how how have you been dealing with this
so that's on the ux site and then I'm
also interested like on the infra site
like actually what what are the INF
requirements like what difficulties have
you run into um
yeah let's go let's do the U stuff first
like so like what interesting user
behaviors have you observed um what sort
of ux prompts ux patterns have you found
useful and um how do you compensate for
like the ux hit the performance hit in
these
apps okay um so for ZK P2P we have two
flows of interacting with these like
cryptographic Primitives that we use uh
one the first one is obviously using ZK
email um I think the main main thing
about using ZK email is trying to get
that email in your inbox um to yeah to
start the proof generation process and
that's been a difficult thing to resolve
you could basically the manual way is
you have to open like the raw email uh
copy it and then paste it into the UI
and then click a button to run the proof
generation process uh so we basically
built uh like a o we like got a Gmail
API oath flow uh that will basically um
yeah o off into your inbox uh and read
the email and but uh keeping it
completely local in client side uh to
kick off the proof generation process um
so that has helped with ux a little bit
but it's obviously like a workaround
kind of thing um and trying to smooth
out ux things and also uh yeah after
getting extracting that email the next
step is obviously Genera that proof
themo email circuits are like massive
they like they probably will take like 8
minutes to do client side um but like 20
seconds to do on the server um so we
pass it all through the server and so
far like I guess all of our users are
fine with that uh I think um yeah I
think it it's yeah they're okay with
that leaking that level of privacy um uh
yeah do they know that they're sending
the pl Tex email yeah yeah yeah we uh
yeah we disclose everything um to to the
user uh that we are doing that um yeah
and then I guess the second flow I was
going to talk about is we also use like
TLS notary uh which uh I guess for that
flow you basically need to have the
users like like credentials in order to
generate that like MPC proof so in order
to get that you basically need to
install or create a browser extension uh
to scrape those like that request and
response uh in in order to pass it to
the NPC proof um and of course all of
this is done local and client side um
but yeah I think the reason for that is
that's kind of non-negotiable like us
like storing cookies on a server running
cookies through a server and their
credentials is like a complete noo
whereas email is a little bit more okay
uh in terms of privacy U but yeah that
that's also a kind of ux hurdle we had
to deal with like trying to get users to
install a browser extension and going
through that
flow yeah maybe one thing ZK email
learned a lot from zkp Top is that yeah
it's always important to have the clear
user flow so actually after you guys
added the Google o flow and realize
people are actually using this we added
it to all of the existing zkm apps too
where it's like you can because we
noticed hey like as long as there is a
way for users to do the easy path and as
long as we that means we have to offer a
way for the self-hosted or fully private
path and so it's kind of as long as that
path exists it's kind of fine to have an
option for easy users who don't care to
just use the kind of simple sign in with
Google select the email move on path um
as long as it's possible for the people
who really care about privacy to get
that privacy they want either they
manually upload the email they select do
a client side they're willing to take
the ux hit in exchange for privacy or we
and this is one of the advantages of
having a totally open source
organization is that all of our repos
are open like you can go if you don't
trust ZK pb's front end get the or you
don't trust zk's front end go go to the
GitHub repo clone it locally run it and
if you really really care about privacy
there's always ways to to get around the
ease of use uh turn keys that we've put
into the UI but for me it's kind of like
we've learned okay as long as there is
the easiest possible path and a way for
someone who cares about privacy to do
the private path we feel like that's
been like a good enough mix of things
even if people in general don't
necessarily always do the private path
um so that's one ux pattern we've
noticed has been really nice
um yeah yeah um bunch of thoughts here I
guess first one is about privacy and
like I I feel like one of the main
appeals of building consumer apps with
programmable cryptography is is the
Privacy you get right is the choice and
the consent that you have and that is
like one of the major reasons why these
Technologies are so powerful but I feel
like if you go down the street and you
just like talk to people I think what
I've noticed is people just don't even
understand privacy from your peers
versus privacy from the server like this
simple concept of like hey they look at
your venmo history and if you look at it
you can have like venmo or whatever
payment app you use like you can have
transactions only visible to your
friends only visible to yourself like
people think when you set your
transactions to be only visible to
yourself like that is privacy right that
is like just privacy in general that's
what that means but it's like a
completely different concept when all
this cryptography offers privacy from
the server which is really what we're
aiming for right like we don't trust
server to get hacked or to be malicious
or all this stuff um and I feel like
this this is really like a critical
question we need to solve in like
communication and design of how do you
actually convey this to users um so
here's here's one idea I can propose
which is like from from Rachel uh at
cursive and also Tomo from the EF like
they're both wonderful designers and
they have this idea uh which they can
talk more about of like hey we should
have some sort of like standard UI kit
for like communicating to users like
when you see this interface it means
it's actually private from the server
like this looks totally different it
feels totally different uh it is
different um and that's actually
connected to the technology right
because right now there really is no
difference and people don't understand
that so I feel like having something
like that where when the user actually
uses the app that would maybe change
their perception of things a little bit
you mean like a incognito mode or
something yeah yeah something like that
like incognito mode like it feels
different because it's like dark yeah
right it's like or the I think of like
the TLs like green lock icon like at the
very least having some visual component
where it's like oh it's not like a
standard or something but it's basically
this Norm you assume that if we have
this green lock icon then you your
connection is like more secure in some
ways and we're just going to all like
uphold each other to This Promise
because at the end of the day like this
is all up to like people building apps
to just agree on and to like call out
the people who don't follow this and to
all work together to communicate
I think that's a super nice point and
like if you look at cryptographic papers
or whatever when they like draw the
protocols and The Primitives like they
do have a sort of like it's hashed box
like it's there's lines in the box when
things are secret shared or it's a clear
box when it's in plain text or it's
black whatever so it does exist and I
think this is nice but one other point
that I was I wanted to mention was a bit
on still on the design side and also
from Rachel I guess or from cursive is
like that you really play with the ideas
that you know like the concepts that
these programmable crypto Primitives
give and you sort of yeah you play with
them in your own minds and sort of
somehow translate this I don't know
about design or how you do it but like
you somehow translate this to the user
so like downstairs in the museum there's
these art pieces where there's the QR
code that you can scan and input an
emotion and like it explains like Hey
we're going to send a hash of this and
like prove that you know the pre-image
and like this is so cool like even Just
sh showing people the language and
showing people like just mentioning it
just saying okay this is what's going on
here I think makes people aware and like
it's like okay cool I'm doing some
crypto yeah and I so I was just getting
lunch with Gordon who's like the artist
behind that piece like basically like uh
we were talking about ZK cryptography
for for a while for a few hours and like
he made this wonderful R piece
explaining how you can keep your
emotions private blah blah blah um but I
feel like what what what came out of
that conversation is that the most
important thing for all of us who are
building apps in programmable
cryptography is communication like we
cannot just be technologists like if we
want to actually build apps that people
use like we need to communicate and we
need to talk to people and like explain
hey this is what privacy means this is
why you should want it this is what
decentralization means or whatever like
communication is arguably like more than
half the job you can't just build the
technology build The Primitives and just
like throw it out there and hope
something Good's going to happen but
it's not even just regular communication
it's like you make it look cool and fun
and entertaining and like if I'm using
an app I gen okay unless it's like a
super serious thing that I want actual
privacy like real real privacy for fine
but if I'm just like using an app I'm
probably doing it for some sort of
entertainment or like some fun or to
like engage with my friends or whatever
like and then having it like look cool
and feel cool and feel like a shiny cool
app then it's great and I think this is
something that you do well like uh it
feels cool I want to be part of it so
yeah I
think yeah like that's what's cool about
cursive is like they make it like joyful
social um and like uh they sort of it's
sort of turning that um privacy as like
isolation and darkness kind of metaphor
on its head so um that was really cool I
I think yeah um all these ux insights
there's no way to get them without
deploying in the wild without being in
production um I guess I'm also
interested in sort of on the back end
like um the on the infrastructure side
um so I I guess I have two sort of
questions about infrastructure first of
all um is it expensive to run these apps
so it's a leading question cuz I know it
is I want to know how expensive and then
like basically what improvements do you
see in store what improvements are you
excited
about my second question is sort of a
spicier one and it's about um
decentralization so for
example for example worldcoin um they're
secret sharing their
Iris codes using
T um to three servers so to me three is
a small number um how do we yeah I I'm
wondering like another example is TLS
notary so they rely on a set of trusted
notaries to be the other party in the
2pc um and how big is this set so yeah
it's it's kind of an infrastructure
question but it's also kind of a
decentralization question like um
underlying these Primitives like what
implementations and what infrastructure
are we actually using um and yeah what
are your thoughts on how this will
develop should I start we laughed when
you brought this up and I wanted to
explain why we laughed and I don't know
if I should say it like in front of a
room because we haven't discussed this
at all with the teams but like so like
this week was the first time we deployed
let's say Co snarks in like prod like
properly so like this week is it's like
fresh out of the oven and it's like
messy it's been a bit messy it's all our
fault they didn't do anything wrong it's
not like so like um so so the situation
is this like we have established a
network so T is running a bunch of nodes
cursive are running a bunch of nodes and
psse are running a bunch of nodes and
they all do computation they do a multi
party computation between them and
produce a coar and so some of the things
you might learn when you go into prod
that you wouldn't learn in a hackathon
like as you said about like auditing and
security like being immature for MPC and
F and the more advanced things yeah like
infrastructure and support there is
super uh not in place yet so like
yesterday we had um a bit of an incident
where two of the nodes of one of the
parties died and they had one node left
and so this there our
party but like okay there was some sleep
involved because they stayed up all
night to finish the thing to actually
get it done for Devcon so it's a it's a
good reason but uh yeah like one like
just the nodes died and they just needed
to be rebooted and um that's it but
there was no like alarm or notifications
or like anything set up you know this
kind of like support that just keeps
things online or like small stupid
things that are like the absolute like
complete like essential things in any
sort of advanced Tech not even Advanced
but like used Tech like the the most
basic things are not there and we focus
on just getting things working but like
yeah this sort of support to keep it
going it's just not there but um and in
terms of cost I also don't know if I
should talk about this without knowing
exactly but like I think for us setting
this up I think is it for each party I
think it's about $7 per day for like
seriously be Fe machines so yeah not too
bad yeah I don't I don't have much on
numbers that I know of uh concretely but
I think in terms of like what you said
like this is not something that we would
have learned this quickly if we didn't
deploy it right like this uh we were
using coars for like the leaderboard for
like handing out merch downstairs like
if you tap like 40 people you generate a
proof of it and like you can get a shirt
um the shirt that I'm wearing which is
super sick um but like we learned of
this incident like literally 30 seconds
in because people's leaderboards like
weren't updating and they couldn't get
their shirts and like they were so mad
they were like oh where's my shirt I
want my shirt like my leaderboard isn't
updating so I feel like having that
feedback loop instantaneously is like
super useful and we like we learned this
lesson and like we fix it overnight and
like now we learned something new maybe
I can add one good point and then I'll
be Qui but uh like the good point is
that we had many more we generated many
many more coars than we expected so like
the load was much much higher than we
expected and the reason it went down was
like yeah
like it was not because of let's say so
much load um but like we are handling
much more throughput than we expected we
could in like pretty good times so
that's the good outcome that we wouldn't
have also expected without going into
prod and like a lot of it is because of
the response of people at the conference
actually like people are super curious
and cool to try it out so that's
something we wouldn't
learn yeah that's a good problem like
higher than expected through pit and
that's a good like alert system angry
users demanding
shirts those are like the joys of
deploying in the wild and having real
users um so I do think I'm supposed to
open to questions from the audience but
I don't see any questions do you you
don't I think questions after that time
oh okay so we have 9 minutes left and
then we'll open into questions great
because I'm really not done here um yeah
I think the second part of my question
was like what do you see in the future
like future improvements that you're
looking forward to I in particular um
want to ask about mobile interfaces and
whether yeah that's a priority for you
guys what challenges uh do you see like
sort of what blockers do you have right
now um and what challenges do you see in
future or what needs to happen to make
um like a joyful mobile experience for
the
users uh maybe one thing we've thought
about on the infrastructure side and on
the mobile side is um because proofs
cost a couple cents on a server and will
cost a couple more sents if you do coars
um there is quite a pressure to push
things to the client side because then
it's free the user handles a computation
for you and so one interesting thing is
that if ZK proofs get really big and if
people are doing you know not just
hundreds of proofs a day but thousands
or hundreds of thousands of proofs a day
then there's a really big pressure
economically to create client side
proving I think that's quite cool
because client side proving is kind of
the Holy Grail of where ZK privacy comes
in you don't actually leave privacy to
anybody else and so I think that's it's
actually potentially a good thing that
it that uh we can incentivize this
research um and so far there's only like
you know maybe two or three
organizations I can think of that are
really invested in okay really we should
get client side proving today
because you kind of like you value in
crypto often Cru to the points of
centralization and by saying we're going
to do client side proving you're
removing that point of centralization of
we run the pro we make the money um and
so it's not currently economically
advantageous for infrastructure
providers to do client side proving but
when applications are like we don't we
don't want to pay you know hundreds of
dollars a month or or thousands of
dollars a month to you then all of a
sudden applications are now incentivized
to use somebody who is providing that
client side proving and so um yeah
that's one thing that I'm excited about
in the future infrastructure wise and
also for mobile proving we've seen some
teams like mpro like ligron like teams
in PSC like Noir really be like how can
we get this client side proving done um
and yeah we're we're excited to see more
of that there's there's a lot of tech
that has been underutilize like web GPU
simd acceleration things you can get on
mobile devices that you need for these
email proof because people most of the
time are just going to scan a QR code
sign into their email on mobile and make
a proof and you want to make that flow
as fast as
possible yeah I think for us uh we Echo
a lot of the same things uh you said
about client side proving for our ZK
stack um I guess for us we also since we
also use TLS notary and the MPC side um
we're I guess we're especially also
really interested in building like a
mobile based flow uh to enable like yeah
enable some of our
marketplaces and the bottleneck there um
is I guess the it's also memory where
like yeah like like mobile has just much
lower memory um than on I guess browser
uh but yeah also like bandwidth and
internet connection matters a lot in NPC
um and when you're on your phone um
you're typically like out um so uh you
may not have access to like highspeed
internet for example to like finish
generating these NPC proofs and as a
result like the connection drops and
which is a terrible user experience uh
for some people but I think there are
quite a lot of like improvements like
coming soon on the NPC front on the TLs
notary front which uh yeah cuts the
bandwidth requirement by like I don't
know like like a huge like Factor um and
yeah we're pretty excited to adopt that
and yeah support mobile um as a Next
Step yeah I think like mobile is super
interesting to us just because it has
such a wide toolkit for social apps like
things like Bluetooth NFC like web
Bluetooth web web NFC like they just
suck I don't know they just don't work
um or like not supported by a lot of
browsers I think apple has a lot of
security restrictions on on some things
there um and it just sort of widens the
toolkit of things that you can build uh
in the social context um um so I think
like mobile to me is super important and
it also is just like a much more buttery
experience than a than a web app but
then you have the question of like how
do you get people to download a mobile
app I don't know yeah there's there's
these things called app clips now you
don't need to download a mobile app tell
me about app
Clips yeah it's um yeah so there's
basically these app clips and instant
apps on the Android store where uh like
Google or um Google and Apple offer ways
for you to like try out the app without
actually downloading going through the
App Store so you basically scan a QR
code it loads some like temporary like
uh like a binary on your phone and you
get to interact with some limited
features of the application without
needing to go through the App
Store maybe like one point that kind of
touches on another question you wanted
is um like something that I'm excited
about is something something that I
think both of you mentioned a little bit
is about the different models of NPC so
like the one where the user is actually
part of the computation or when uh yeah
it's a different like you delegate fully
everything to the network um and so like
in some cases it can be that you know as
long as one per party is honest that you
know the whole thing can remain secure
and so if I'm involved in this protocol
and I know for sure that I'm honest then
I can say that this is a good like that
this protocol is secure and this no
collusion happening we're like quite I
think not there yet at all for that but
like I would love to see this happening
this would be super cool oh absolutely
that's like um one of the interesting
thing about coars as well is because of
the security guarantee from the snark
site you can relax requirements on the
MPC site and so yeah all all these sort
of
interesting like paradigms emerge um
when you're like confronted with these
use cases um where and they they can
like these huse cases become interesting
in applications like maybe in Academia
they were not interesting theoretically
but yeah like in practice you realize
okay like this is like an opportunity um
to like get some performance gains yeah
so that's a really cool point I guess
with my remaining two and a half minutes
um I want to I want to find out what
you're excited about so yeah what what
applications have you seen that are like
wow far out there or what applications
can you imagine um what
applications um would be like holy grail
for you um and this can involve like uh
this can be extensions of what you're
working on now or it can even involve
like um far out Primitives that you're
looking at like witness encryption or
something um yeah I'd like to hear um
what what in store for the next few
months and
years I personally really want to see
more digital signatures and more ZK
poofs of those signatures I mean emails
is just one example but if you can get
for instance designed website standards
to be more adopted you can get any
website frontend now approved on chain
and you can already do this with some
things like Forbes in Italy um but it
would be great if more websites did this
I'm also excited about um pufs like
physical clonable functions being the
route for new open source tees I think
uh like uh open source tees is kind of a
holy grail and gives us the ability to
to do a lot of this private computation
without having to rely in uh you know
Intel getting hacked every two years um
what else I'm excited about witness
encryption I think more research around
new kinds of privacy modes and maybe
I'll even that Andrew talk more about
that and um yeah I'm also excited about
more far out things like making certain
versions of IO a little bit faster
making um having NPC FHA be faster
things like we've seen like Apple's w-
they just released like a ML and FHA
kind of application and I think seeing
more of that um more Enterprises get
into these privacy protocols make them
faster um
yeah so for me I guess um yeah like
making things faster like harder better
faster stronger is always the goal but I
think I would love to see more like what
you are doing actually and I think um um
there's not so much incentive to
actually play with these tools and I
think the gain from playing with these
tools and like onboarding users and
educating them is huge but somehow
people don't do it enough and so like
there are apps like yours like Tonk
they're building these you know like uh
Salon basically where EAS Speak Easy
yeah exactly where you can meet your
friends like and have this private
environment where you can yeah like come
in if you can prove some stuff and like
yeah this sort of transitive trust idea
like all this kind of cool stuff um like
this for me would be great I'd love to
see this actually happening more and
more yeah I'm super excited about new
applications of MPC so specifically this
concept called digital fairmon and the
idea here is that like real fairmon are
these chemical biochemical signals that
you send around to find people you're
compatible with and what if we could
build the same thing with MPC but
related to Digital Data digital
information so you have these signals
that you send around and because
everything is private everything is safe
just like your normal phermones are you
just get to see like where your
compatibility is you get to see who you
match with who you might be in a group
with who you might be able to do stuff
with um and it just happens naturally
and so one way we can actually implement
this is through a new scheme uh we came
up with called Trinity and Trinity is
called Trinity because it's a
combination of three schemes
specifically kzg witness encryption uh
garbled circuits and plunk uh so the
rough setup here is that you have your
own private data and you just upload a
kzg commitment of this into the cloud or
wherever and like people can just start
asking you questions people can start
making private queries based on this
data right and essentially like you only
need to respond to these queries if you
actually meet those criteria like these
these commitments are like fairmon from
your data they're like hiding
commitments to your data um and you can
just like naturally have other people
around you ask questions and say hey
like am I compatible with this person
like am I able to do something with this
person uh and you can just discover that
and it's only possible because MPC uh
enables this privacy and
safety yeah I I think I'm really excited
about like more practical applications
that like use these schemes that are
like um being like more and more robust
and secure over I guess the next year I
think a lot of protocols I think ZK
email went through it um and a lot of
these other like protocols such as tlsn
will be I guess in the next year or two
and I think uh as these protocols become
faster and easier to use I think we'll
see more and more practical applications
like ours um and yeah like stuff that
you can do with web2 data uh come online
and yeah I think I'm just really excited
to see like combination using schemes
these these different schemes in
combination with each other in
production yeah very cool cool um so I
think now we're supposed to open to
audience
questions I still don't see
them oh there they
are so we'll start with the most
uploaded which is um yeah what's the
path forward for mobile do we need a new
browser who will fund
it I guess like we already addressed um
sort of Outsourcing heavy computations
from mobile whereas this question is I'm
I'm interpreting it more of like um sort
of the current standards of mobile like
you mentioned there's taets now but
there's lots of um sort of restrictions
on mobile apps that make it hard to say
directly interface into like TLS notary
let's say um so like
how do we deal with these standards that
are um incompatible with The Primitives
we need do we yeah how do we deal with
them do we like start from scratch with
a new browser what what do you guys
think for mobile specifically like I
feel like we just need more people
building mobile apps and just
experimenting like that's basically it
like there's how many apps exist today
on the App Store that are like uh mobile
apps with programmable cryptography
running clients side like I I don't I
don't know we we don't have one um so I
feel like we just need to learn the
lessons there pretty
much yeah I agree with that I think we
need yeah more Dev tooling more
developers uh building these kind of
programmable crypto U mobile apps um I
think in particular like there's a lot
of pain we experienced trying to do this
um in like yeah the main requirements
being able to extract like the
credentials um through like a web view
like privately and keep it local and
apple just doesn't give you or react
native or any of the mobile Frameworks
just don't they don't give you that
tooling right now so you have to be
pretty hacky um uh when you're
developing I think in the mobile browser
side one thing we really want is uh
there's this kind of vectorization
called simd and you can only access
64-bit registers in Mobile right now but
if we could access access to full 256bit
registers you could do ZK proofs a lot
faster um similarly web GPU exists on
most laptops but doesn't isn't doesn't
have very good support on mobile so I
think in the short term if browsers can
ship those that would be super awesome
and then uh but I do think the large
browsers will have that eventually in
Mobile within the next like year or two
and that'll help accelerate a lot of
these client side
proofs cool um okay what are you going
to have privacy by default the heart
path not just privacy by complicated UI
and default no privacy and limited
security I don't I don't know how to
parse this do you guys get the question
um I guess it's kind of responding to
something I used that about yeah like
it's okay to present an easy path as
long as we make available the fully
private like hard path of like
completely self-posted approving um
question mark maybe one thing I can
clarify on that is I I think it is
possible to have decent UI for things
that are private like for instance
dragging and dropping the email
on on like a computer is not that bad
like it's still an option in the UI and
it's definitely harder than sounding
with Google but it's it's not like you
have to download something and get clone
and run locally like you can still give
option to do that in the UI and we try
to do that where we can and so I I do
think yeah it's a fair point that foring
people to self host is maybe not the
best way to offer privacy but I do think
you can have buttons in the UI that hey
this will take a little bit longer this
might require an extra action but it'll
be
private how far are we from ZK based
transitive trust graphs of 10K plus
users in
DBS good
question I'm looking at you I would say
uh and I probably shouldn't say but I
would probably say it's closer than we
think I mean it's a hard problem and
especially if you want to do this fully
privately like suppose you want to do
like a full trust graph in in MPC you
need to do like essentially a full
search because almost everything is
connected so it's super inefficient and
it's yeah not not so good now but I
would imagine that like I mean the speed
at which things are improving now I
would say not too far away yeah I think
technically it's possible for me it's
like uh like how to design this like
protocol Wise It's like how do you do
this the right way where this is like
fair for people there's a lot of like
tricky I don't know moral uh product
questions that are uh to be answered
here
MH I was also thinking just now that um
fhe is one example where like you cannot
offload and don't want to offload to
client side you fully want the server to
absorb the cost so yeah like I guess um
and the tradeoffs you know um oh sorry
for gesturing this is just my my opinion
um like the tradeoff is um just
individual users doing less work um and
that could maybe allow you to scale to
10K plus users but yeah like you said
there's a it's a big design space um all
right how do you solve the issue of
querying large dat databases efficiently
in MPC all queries are linear in the
database size
no maybe one quick thing is like apple w
like their new F system solves this by
one like bucketing so you say look we're
going to make square root of n buckets
and we're going to send it to the right
bucket then you leak a little bit of
information which is which bucket did
the query go to so they send square root
of n queries and then it's like well you
know which which query is the right
query you don't know and the user throws
away all about one of the queries so I
thought that was a kind of clever way to
you know leak a little bit of privacy
but then undo that leakage uh and have
it be a bit more
efficient oh okay so it's like linear
over square root and buckets and you can
keep kind of recursively doing the
square root of n uh I see
yeah how about I know world does have
this um they do a database search per
new Iris code so yeah we do actually
search over the full database for this
and like it is quite optimized and it's
quite efficient but like it's yeah
heavily specialized optimized protocol
so far um but I mean there is work
definitely on um
like like lookup tables and you know
like there are ways I mean there people
are looking into this and coming up with
like clever tricks like this um but yeah
so far it's
uh people are looking into it but it is
still an issue we need more P research
PR is really cool private information
retrieval isn't P also like linear work
on the server site though yeah yeah yeah
right now I think they you just like
encrypt the whole database yeah but not
for the user yeah um cool so I think we
are over time now um and I really love
this panel thank you so much to the
panelists thank you thank you also Fork
you
guys I actually had to say