ZK7: Break Time Music with Justin from Threshold

Transcript

[Music] it's such a giant room i know i know go for it check [Music] [Music] sounds okay right [Applause] i thought i'd bust out the kalimba for this one [Music]

kalimba is nice because it makes whatever you say sound really dramatic and mysterious [Music] so [Music] um yeah zero knowledge proofs yeah but what do we like better validators or math [Music] there's like the contrarian at the back

is like validators [Music] um how old is this question how old is the question what do we like better validators or math like it seems like it's vintage is like 2020 or something right but i want to suggest that it's actually probably about a thousand years old not too terribly much older not too terribly much younger you see [Music] like the beginning of the holy roman empire republic of pisa and other like major ports you know in italy which they call italy where all this mercantile activity is happening

well then when they wanted to count the results of things what did they do they they got out an abacus and they counted and then they wrote down the result in roman numerals [Music] and the problem with this was that you had to actually witness the counting to verify it so if someone wanted the result to be different if a powerful person wanted to say that the result was not what you claimed it was you had no way except to repeat the work on the abacus with more witnesses and so this is why my son is named fibonacci this is why fibonacci and others like him the you

know the fibonacci we all know and love uh decided that we needed place place number systems you know like the arabic and african and indian worlds had already been doing for nearly a thousand years at this point and really this is a zero knowledge proof if you think about it right they what we wanted was a system wherein instead of relying on the validator the witness to the abacus that we could have a proof on a sheet of paper that you could walk away with and be certain that the transaction was what the result of the transaction was what you said it was and absent that is sort of like an inside joke right it's like well you had to be there to know whether the transaction resulted in what we you know whether the

result was what we said it was [Music] and obviously this opened a huge door for powerful you know states and you know the cops could come and tell you you're not allowed to claim that that was the result of that transaction and it took ideas being imported to the world of white people from africa and the middle east and india to achieve this initial zero knowledge proof so while we fascinate ourselves with the possibilities of polynomial commitments and building circuits with

them [Music] i think it's important that we think critically about the thousand-year-old lineage of zero-knowledge proofs or validators we get a lot of uh you know what's the story here which which wrecks more environmental havoc math or validators [Music] as we like are amidst uh this question about the waste the carbon

waste of proof of work mining which whatever i don't know proof of work proof of work is going to be here for a while obviously but [Music] there's a certain species speciousness right about the idea that uh like when you ask how much carbon is pre you know does proof of work actually use and find out that it's an enormous amount well underpinning that question is which is more environmentally wasteful math or validators you know and when we think about proof of work as the math option then we need to compare it to the environmental devastation of validators right foreign policy trade policy really

easy money causing everyone to spend it on cheap plastic from the other side of the world this is the validator model and so which is more environmentally destructive [Music] i'm uh [Music] i try to write songs about love and sex and drugs and rock and roll but they all end up being about zero knowledge proofs oh it's terrible and um

[Music] why [Music] well several of the people that said they were just going to like get t and come back aren't here yet so i'm just gonna play terrible [Music] reckless

is that audible [Music] do [Music] i think the we will validate your math for you model as one of the most

destructive environmentally destructive ideologies in the history of humankind [Music] so [Music] if it seemed like the math version was

going to be environmentally wasteful we wouldn't i don't know how many of us would really be into it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] try not to let room for applause creep in

[Music] all right actually [Music] i'm playing a longer a longer set tomorrow night at seven on the main stage at the co-working space so there you can we'll play more originals but i'll just do this one for you [Music] so

oh you can't see me you can't only see my key but i don't love the chain more than i pedal toward the sun to make peace with someone and plant lilacs on the morning of the bank run [Music] way down ahead and time runs us in a run time when we love each other's thread let what will just be

the blocks that are ahead generate all of history a caress across the chains i sent one lover grains through consensus tubes of secrets and chickens a zero knowledge proof is for thundering hooves through a storm of scams of talking heads and blood stain-pillared roofs [Applause]

runs us in a run time when we love each other's thread let what will just be the blocks that are ahead generate all of history [Music] do [Music] oh

[Applause] [Music] you