Evan Shapiro & Izaak Meckler: Coda – A Succinct Blockchain

One of the key scalability challenges with public cryptocurrency blockchains is that their size grows linearly with the number of transactions. Mature blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum contain >170GB and >1 TB of historical data respectively. New nodes joining these chains need to download this data and verify it in order to become a “full node”. The number of full nodes is a key measure of decentralization, and difficulty becoming a full node translates into future centralization.

In this episode, we are joined by the duo of Evan Shapiro and Izaak Meckler, CEO and CTO at O(1) Labs respectively. O(1) Labs is a pioneering company that uses zkSNARK technology in order to construct a cryptocurrency blockchain, called Coda, that solves the blockchain size scalability bottleneck. New nodes joining the Coda network will be able to trustlessly boot up in under a minute by verifying cryptographic proofs that attest to the validity of the current chain. This technology has great potential to enable decentralization, and for one blockchain to be a light client of another blockchain.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Scalability challenges of current cryptocurrencies
• Background on O(1) Labs and their mission statement
• How Coda uses succinct computational integrity technology (zkSNARKs) to enable further decentralization of blockchains
• Snarky – a domain specific language for zkSNARK computations
• Current state of Coda and roadmap

Episode links:

• Coda protocol website
• Coda Whitepaper
• Presentation on Snarkly by Izzak Meckler
• zkSNARKs in a nutshell by Christian Reitweissner
• zkSNARKs in a nutshell by Vitalik Buterin
• Coda presentation at hack.summit("blockchain") 2018

This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/243