Field notes is a series where we report on the ground at significant industry, research, and other events. In this edition, Valeria Nikolaenko, a Research Partner with the a16z crypto lab, reports on the Zero Knowledge Proof Workshop from the Crypto Economics Security Conference (CESC), which took place on October 30 at the University of California at Berkeley. The program aimed to bring together researchers and practitioners to showcase and discuss the most recent developments in blockchain and web3. You can watch recordings of the presentations here.

Dan also explained a new system called HyperPlonk, which can eliminate expensive FFTs on the prover’s side and handles gates of high degree much more efficiently, reducing both prover’s time and proof’s size. The interesting parameter to remember is that FFTs dominate the prover’s time when the number of gates is above 220.

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Valeria Nikolaenko is a Research Partner at a16z crypto. Her research focuses on cryptography and blockchain security. She has also worked on topics such as long-range attacks in PoS consensus protocols, signature schemes, post-quantum security, and multi-party computation. She holds a PhD in Cryptography from Stanford University under advisorship of Professor Dan Boneh, and worked on the Diem blockchain as part of the core research team.

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