Programme
Tutorials
Tutorial: Zero-Knowledge Proofs
Speaker: Alexandre Miranda Pinto
Abstract: ZK-SNARKs (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge) are an exciting area of cryptography that has recently generated much interest in the cryptocurrencies community. Although Zero-Knowledge proofs have been around since the 1980s, the first practical ZK-SNARK dates from only 2013, and shortly after, a variant thereof has been applied to the Zerocash protocol and the creation of the private cryptocurrency ZCash. In 2017, the Ethereum Foundation introduced support for the ZK-SNARKs used by ZCash at that time and interest in the technology is surging since then.
This session will give a tutorial on ZK-SNARKs, including a high-level view of ZK-SNARKs and some mathematical background. The second part of the session will include a demonstration of the actual process of implementing a full ZK-SNARK journey, from the specification of the kind of statement to be proven, key and proof generation to the verification of a proof.
Biography of the Speaker: Dr Pinto graduated at the close of the 90s in Software Engineering from the University of Porto, Portugal. After some years as a professional developer, he went to grad school and earned a PhD in Computer Science from the same university, specializing in Cryptography and Complexity. Dr Pinto became a lecturer in software development and security, until he took an opportunity as a Post-Doc researcher with the Information Security Group in Royal Holloway, University of London. Currently, he works in the blockchain arena, developing , researching and writing to improve awareness of blockchain technologies and help other developers in this field.
Tutorial: Smartcontracts, from Hello World to Basic Cryptoeconomics
Speaker: Jerome de Tychey
Abstract: This tutorial is a hands-on introduction to the Solidity language for smart contracts on Ethereum. The attendees will deploy and interact with basic smart contracts. They will then interact with an application based on non-fungible tokens that illustrates how smart contracts can be used in the context of game theory.
Biography of the Speaker: Jerome is executive director at ConsenSys Solutions which helps organizations across the globe build, test, and deploy public and private blockchain applications. He has a background in economics and used to be an assistant professor at Sorbonne and Paris Dauphine. He jumped into the blockchain space in 2013 and has a particular interest in cryptoeconomics and mining. He founded and is the current president of Asseth which is the largest blockchain oriented non-profit in France. Asseth organises weekly free coding workshops and supports several education and research oriented initiatives.