Proof of Solvency with Kostas Chalkias

This week, Anna explores the topic of proof of solvency with Kostas Chalkias, co-founder and chief of Cryptography at MystenLabs. They cover Kostas’ background in Cryptography and explore his work on Proof of Reserves, otherwise known as Proof of Solvency. They review past Proof of Solvency models using ZKPs and look at the protocols that major centralized exchanges are currently using. Then they dive into the security vulnerabilities, privacy issues, and general bugs that Kostas and his collaborators have identified in these protocols and their recommendations on how to better build Proof of Solvency systems.

Here are some additional links for this episode:

• Episode 227: Move & Sui with Sam Blackshear from Mysten Labs
• Hard Questions: Update on Cambridge Analytica
• Provisions: Privacy-preserving proofs of solvency for Bitcoin exchanges By Dagher, Bünz, Bonneau, Clark and Boneh
• Broken Proofs of Solvency in Blockchain Custodial Wallets and Exchanges By Chalkias, Chatzigiannis and Ji
• Groth16 still lives: exploring tradeoffs of modern ZKProof systems - François Garillot Mysten Labs
• Join the ZK HACK III - final sessions here
• Join the ZK HACK Discord

Today’s episode is sponsored by Aleo

Aleo is a new Layer-1 blockchain that achieves the programmability of Ethereum, the privacy of Zcash, and the scalability of a rollup.

If you’re interested in building private applications then check out Aleo’s programming language called Leo. Visit leo-lang.org to start building.

You can also join Aleo’s incentivized testnet3 by downloading and running a snarkOS node. No sign-up is necessary to participate. For questions, join their Discord at aleo.org/discord.

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