ZKPodcast: Exploring Tezos & their recent Sapling integration

Transcript

[Music] welcome to zero knowledge a podcast where we talk about the latest in zero knowledge research and the decentralized web the show is hosted by me Anna and me [Music] this week I speak with Jacob mark and Marco from the tezo's community we chat about the network the validator community governance and how they're looking to incorporate zero knowledge proof some other privacy tech into their system but before we start in I want to say thank you to this week's sponsor trail of bits software makers and

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tis us and I have three members of the community here to help kind of help me understand a little bit about tezo's the governance the validator community and also how they've incorporated privacy into the system so I'd like to welcome to the show Jacob our look who's the co-founder of TQ as well as Marc Bernardo and Markos drone Adi both from nomadic so welcome to the show guys thanks Travis I think I mean I I think because you're from two organizations and because there's there's three of you I think it's really important for us to understand kind of who you are let's start with you Jacob you are the co-founder of something called TQ what is TQ and what is your relationship to tis us so involvement project for about

two years so originally was involved with the foundation somewhat around the launch and helped with some of the operational needs around launched back in 2018 and then basically decided that we you know there was sort of no entity focused on adoption in the ecosystem broadly at the time and so we decided to spin up an you know a company in the u.s. in New York basically that would be focusing on does this adoption cool and so like the tezo's organization though isn't it mostly in France is that sort of the main spot of development well I guess it's sort of all over the world but basically a lot of independent like

teams you know what between like you know the folks in there's certainly like a huge massive share of the project is in France for sure there's also folks in u.s. some folks in Asia and other parts of Europe so Germany a lot a lot in Eastern Europe you know there's some in Ukraine Russia etc but yeah there's a lot there's a lot of activity throughout Europe some activity in South America cool alright so Marc and Marco you're both from nomadic labs tell me what nomadic labs are and what you do there yeah so actually the first time I heard somebody referred to your money labs Oscar oh oh sorry is it nomadic lab no no your I I'm not sure actually I mean check

anyway for now there's one lab let's say that we're ambitious so we call it labs maybe one day sorry basically from the starting of the start of the project the core of the developers that developed the first prototype and then that work on it until the launch they were in Paris for some historical reasons I guess and because basically the the language so the language that was chosen for the project and for the prototype it's a camel and is kind of a Frenchie thing a little bit I mean it's all over the world but I would say it's kind of a French evening so there were there's a bigger concentration of and your base just in Paris as well I guess yeah I'm busy in school so the companies there

are several people working abroad and what's your role in no matter so I've been there almost from the beginning it was January 2018 and I'm say I'm a senior developer so I worked on a lot of different things the stuff that I liked the most was working on the amendments so we will touch on that later but that says this is ability to evolve its own economic protocol that's what we call an amendment and so you need to write these things and make sure that they're correct it's kind of a complex procedure so I went three of them in the word funny okay so what about you mark what's your role at nomadic so I'm was I go to welcome the supreme integration which

we're gonna talk about so we are finishing on that and then we'd welcome privacy not in a whole did all of you did all of you work kind of in blockchain or decentralized tech before joining this these projects or were you working in other spaces before that I was definitely not in this or follower this base especially in actually the project that Center for me ignited my interest in like it was basically in 2016 was e-cash actually like seeing it actually launch was like I was like wait a minute stuff's going on again in this space you know there's actually cool stuff happening again but no I wasn't in the shitty fur yeah me neither I was

very far from actually not not that far but so I was working in research and mostly on privacy and unsafe technologies so differential privacy and stuff like that for geolocation systems so actually I was crossing paths with a lot of people working on blockchain especially my last year of postdoc but I didn't see the spark there and so initially I used to do a PhD in crypto okay company realized that only in a payment company like sort of a more traditional place yeah Ingenico okay so what was it about this project has like what what was the spark that

got you to join this particular group this particular network or I don't guess community is a better way to say it yeah I feel like at least for myself is like really intellectual interests around the governance I can emergently and logician you're generally thinking that there are a lot of ideas in the project that I thought like we're actually things that do help remove some of the barriers to like a dot adoption of these technologies so basically I've always thought of tezo says trying to keep the good things about blockchain like in end the actual promise of it which is of like keeping having this persistent settlement layer everyone I call while also being able to evolve also being able to represent

stakeholders have safe secure smart contracts stuff like that and obviously the whole proof of stake thing which is all sort of tied into that but it's not that it's like a better a theory a murder this or better that it's more like sort of seeing it as like really trying to get at the root of like why these things are hard to adopt in in you know sort of the broader world which is in general like that they get stuck at a certain point in time and don't evolve past there or that they you know that the constant contracts are not something that you know large institutions or you know sort of people handling large amounts of value feel comfortable you're using yeah for me it was was a sort of a miracle he and I was

doing a post for somebody that knows research you know that postdocs are kind of a dark time in your life and it was indeed and you always get this feeling that so you work very hard to do something you try to solve problems that are so hard and you think they're very useful at the same time you get the feeling this feeling that nobody really cares especially I mean the universe is not too bad but here in Europe you're not paid a great salary you don't have a lot of security like you don't know what's gonna happen in six months and so it's very pretty tough so I was in this spot and then I see and I was looking for a job at that point I was like okay I'm gonna do whatever but I have to do to pay the bills and then I

see this email on the camel lady English saying in saying yeah we're looking for developers for this project so I went to a meeting and so somebody basically told me so it was in a cafe actually because there was no office or anything so basically the this person told me well you can work on whatever you like we have you can choose between this menu of super interesting topics you can do whatever you want you're going to work with brilliant colleagues and you're going to be paid a normal salary and everything's gonna be awesome I was really freaked out like I was like it's too good to be true I'm sure there's a catch they will ask for my firstborn on some horses it hasn't happened yet everything's been great so

it was a big turning point and it was everything was true be like every interesting problems in computer science is in blockchain but now and very smart people very smart colleagues and both you Marko and Jacob you both join quite early as I understand Marc you joined a bit later yes is that correct okay so I want to talk to you Jacob and Marc and Marco about that beginning so were you there like okay but the history of tezo's that I know is that it had a massive ICO during the summer of crypto whatever we call that and it was it was one of the

first that had really kind of extraordinary numbers I remember that and like it's one of the first POS systems to launch as well to actually be live so at what point in that sort of those two poles did you join this project were you there right from the start are we there after the ICO or like at what point so there's this whole thing that happens in between there that maybe a couple of months after that May or June of 2018 or so and so maybe that foundation was fixed in like honest a fix like you know basically they remove just the sort of interesting leadership they're in start probably late February

so it was like two or three months after that okay and yeah I mean at the time there was like there almost it was just like a hodgepodge of people kind of doing stuff there was very little in the way of like any kind of you know clear organization or anything it was sort of just people going at it in different directions and one thing that's really crazy and a lot of people don't know about in the project broadly is that so basically everyone had always talked about like Tesla the govern that does all discover and stuff you know no we're not and we actually were like well wait a second like no one's actually looked at like what this actually means like and so I would go back between New York and Paris like a good amount and I mark and I are basically you know reviewed in

fact I think with Arthur as well you know the the way that the actual process worked so and then we you know released a blog post about it like people always talk about oh yeah it's amazing governance mechanism you can spin employees and get all stuff there was like very little back then in the way of like wait a second like how do you actually how does it actually like did anyone look in the protocol to see like you know it does it actually work the way people described and then the other thing was like so wait a second if we do this like practically speaking what has to happen operationally or like you know in general you have these 450 validators over the world like how are they gonna engage with this this cinema process said so there was sort of yeah so

there's a lot of that early on things like that where there were sort of like things that were promised yeah just like stuff that was promised in a white paper but you have to figure out like how you actually do it you know so let's actually let's mark oh I want to hear about when you join but I also do want to explain maybe to our listeners who might not know that much about the project that early hiccups that the project maybe hit the early kind of conflicts within the foundation so the ico happened there was a foundation creative Swiss Foundation that I guess held that ICO and somewhere between that happening and you joining there was something that happened what happened well I really recommend reading

the wired article from like mid 2018 there was that it was like a cover story of art of Wired like basically yeah I don't I don't really have to be litigated again again it's been covered like a many many different times but a lot of it stems from you know just stems from like basically just the leadership having like some very no the foundation at the you know at the time having very like self-serving priorities yeah so a lot of that stuff is real but like like I can't really I mean I wasn't really there for that so like I

don't really like I like there's a pretty clear understanding of like the general tenor of what happened but I would recommend reading the wired article and other stuff about it and to make an opinion it's like pretty clear that you know there's like somebody who did something that they you know and behaved in ways that they probably shouldn't have and like you know it's really tragic because there was really no like you know everything you know sort of was not even in the end self-serving it was like just self-destructive you know on that in that person's part but yeah and there's like you know all these different supporting actors Marco what what point did you join and what do you make of all

of that another way I lived it so I owe ya I joined and we were in the high of the storm I joined hoping that we will have offices and people coming in and a nice building a nice startup and Indiana was a big mess so we didn't if we didn't get paid for like a month or two but I mean were developers actually we were really lucky and we were really shielded by all the mess by some amazing people administrators that that managed all the mess and managed to make us work like really without the problem so we were so

we were a bit worried but at the same time we kept doing our thing and we were sure that things were well eventually and they did cool so coming out of that like so there had been this sort of you know big high of this ICO then some big publicity and it's remember negative way but like and actually at what point did tezo's launch what date was that so it was so because of all this mess with the foundation and the delays so we were so I think we could have launched after six month more or less we just finishing touches and because of this mess we delayed everything until July what like nomadic where does that was that the original company building it or is that a

different organization so basically there was a colonel I would say of four developers that wrote like 99 percent of the original maenette they actually wrote too much I think they should have stopped earlier and why they over engineered some file okay okay they're very good and they were very excited I guess punching stuff it was all good it was just very hard for us coming after tried you ever make him learn it up in your brain yeah gotta stick hearing curve so these four developers they were working for our company that it wasn't still called a common Pro and very good company for development very good products and then it because they needed

to hi new people and they wanted to build something large they decided to just spin off a new startup and they started hiring people cool who are they who are they that you're talking about who are the days so I think so Arthur that is the founder of the project was very involved in that and there's so Benjamin conveys the was one of the original architects and he's still the CTO of pneumatic there was a shamba which is still working talking about bro but it still collaborates with us for some

topics that then there was yeah we we talked to two alternate French and English anyway so Gregoire was was with us for another a year and a half I think and then he decided to do something else and I'm sure I'm missing somebody anyway and I get slapped at the office and so what is then tell us what is it well like maybe what would how would you describe this network that you built in a nutshell so I think the first thing to understand it's like to give it as sort

of several things at the same time so the first one is sort of I don't call it like an organism but basically this sort of self-aware or like self self-governing economic infrastructure or like you know I mean it the base levels I guess like form of computing system although the world computer mantra of like early aetherium is obviously has a lot of like sort of dark marks nowadays but like I think in general though like their stuff is definitely I think from the beginning always been sort of positioned as a cryptocurrency as well like more like more so a cryptocurrency than our contract platform or world computer type thing and so like even if you gave Mickelson like originally it was designed to be like a better formally very easily fun formally verifiable for

personal Bitcoin script not yeah ah yeah yeah I mean it's during complete etcetera but like and and the the move the transition of the project has been over the past couple years has been towards at least enabling you know like higher level like languages and things like that that make it easy for people to build more expressive conscious more contracts and stuff like that like first and the white paper comes from 2014 and I think was even started in 2013 so like it basically means that like you know this was really reacting to Bitcoin like like I believe that Arthur when he wrote it he um he was he was working on it and then like III my paper came out and he

basically like adapted his white paper like he wasn't you know like this wave of me 16 2017 projects where like you know it's like just like a bunch of like Stanford PhDs who realize that they could you know basically like convince anyone with a checkbook to fund them just because they had a better consensus algorithm like tells us actually Tron is like us the approach of like trying to be better at block chaining like it's trying to be better at block chaining better not just in terms of technology but like in terms of having a stronger like social consensus while also having better you know trying to have better technology like it's like that kind trying to have that combination I think that's the way I would explain it that's interesting I didn't I didn't realize that the inception of it was so early

yeah I think what sets it apart from other projects for me is the distressing the decentralization aspect is this something that Arthur has been really about and I think he's very he's very right this idea that you shouldn't that's that's what the beginning of the when you said is most of the people working in France no like oh no no not that we really try to to be open and to have as many people as possible join the project and build on the project so I don't want to be labeled as the the French blockchain French a theory a missed the other the two bits two labels on Tesla's are Okemo Bitcoin and and

French etherium so so what so even for a family so we're very happy we were very happy to learn that there are people building a you shell in rusts all right they're definitely welcome so no problem so yeah so basically whenever I start the presentation I say I'm gonna tell you the way I lived and seeing things it's just an angle there are many and so for sure I'm gonna be biased done this is not stasis this is the way I see tells us for the for the first like I don't know if it was the first year the project but from from launch but I think there is like a huge sort of dark mark on using the word roadmap like the whole

point of the white paper is that you don't have a like that there's no canonical roadmap and so everyone was like sort of like there can be no roadmap no roadmaps allowed and I think there's definitely been a transition back towards wanting like some amount of clarity from different developers on like what you know what's coming when I'm sure we can cover that and this is this chat as well but that's an interesting component too it's like there's a lot of purism around the language and a lot of purism around wanting to make sure that people understand that like so this is in a company like because there's really only two chains arguably that have meaningful perception as like independent organisms and or independent the sugary systems

wherever like those are really Bitcoin aetherium right I mean if you want to get into that bracket you know basically the only way you can do it is by not being a company like you otherwise your Tron or you're like you know one of these things that will blow up like a firework for five years maybe at my but then like you know they're never gonna be you know a settlement layer for the world or something like that but I guess this you're sort of are highlighting a bit of a challenge of this so you want a decentralized system you don't want to worry like this there's sort of fear of roadmaps or some sort of like single vision because and you have this it sounds like I mean there's an upgrade ability aspect where like there's governance that I'm guess is voting on decisions on how you know

everything's gonna evolve without maybe this Supreme Leader type so how do you do that cuz that's a big challenge like how do you like it has has the attitude evolved from where it was this purist attitude of like it must not have a roadmap to having a roadmap because you've accepted that there has to be a vision who who can have the vision so I think everything was good at the moment the most of the community understood what sanim what's an amendment so the moment that you formalize the governance and you say okay this is our these are the rules by which we're gonna evolve then everybody can start their own roadmap so after that we could say this is nomadic labs

roadmap and you know that is not status roadmap because it depends on the amendments so which EQ can have their own roadmap and other creeping labs and of their own and we will they will need to meet at some point because the governance demand so but after after people understood that there nobody could decide what else goes everybody could say I think this is going this way I'm working for it desert to go in this way interesting actually you just mentioned Tim labs can you share a little bit about like who are the major players in the ecosystem so if I can talk about the developments so because the people I work with so we mostly work with Quicken labs and with

some people from TQ and then there are a few other developers scattered around Japan and Canada and elsewhere but these are the biggest entities like I work with this I'm sure there are also the language teams right so like smart pie and LIGO and some of these other folks contribute as well quite a lot to not like you're not just building language like what happens a lot of times in Tesla says you have people go to build something they find some area in core that they think should be improved from that would make their project easier or better or whatever and that's just like very common with the language folks so the folks at LIGO and and smart hire you know obviously you know they're they're seeing lots of different ways to improve

things and contributing I think as well you're calling them language folks are they working on you hold of Mickelson's you know that's that's correct because sometimes the languages that in the end is gonna be interpreted on the on the blockchain and then you can write your programs in whatever else one as long as it complies to units that's it nice are the founders like this are the founders still involved with this project like how because I know that there's been some talk about this and I wondered if you could just like share I'm happy to take that one so that's I think there's a very big misunderstanding okay if you go look at for example you go and get lab and you go look at the Tesla's Corp a story and you go look at a bunch of the issues you

will find Arthur replying to many of these different folks you'll find you know him talk you know like he's very much still involved he's very much still you know working on there he's you know like there I can't speak for him you know or Kathleen directly but like I the note like what they were I think what they were really arguing are saying was just that like you know there are certain things that were lacking from Tasos if they want to see or want want somebody to bill see someone build and obviously don't have decision-making authority or for any of that so um basically they were they were just like expressing some of those those thoughts I think and I think they're very concerns around like you know that we

need to build better wall and so it needs you know that we hope to see things like you know stable coins or or whatnot and yeah they're there I mean to answer their question though I think without answering for them I think it seems to me like they're like if at least factually if you go on get lab and you look at the you know many of the issues and stuff you'll see Arthur do you think what people are perceiving is this decentralization weird like different groups and different people have kind of like the community is governing it in a lot of ways and so you don't have maybe those founders going on stages in the same way or something like that yeah look I mean and also not just that like governances is like at any meaningful scale if you have government

have some form of like governance it's going to be messy right and the other thing it tells us makes a lot of things clean earn a lot of things better it doesn't like solve the you know thousands year old like challenge of governing governing you know I mean it's just like but point being the other thing is like you know just is messy and like a lot of people want different things or a lot of people want you know want to raise some lower the status of different like priorities or people or whatever and so that and that's like obviously an age-old you know sort of behavior as well so so there's a lot of that as well I think and I think a lot of the things that people see from the outside are sort of indicative of just that kind of like

messy ecosystem I think it's one of the things that I think about a theory I'm a lot people criticized about aetherium but I actually think it's like like one of the most positive signals about aetherium because it shows that it's something worth being controversial at how much like what something worth arguing about right and seems something with with us I think is like it's to a lot of people something worth arguing about and it's something worth you know sort of having different you know differences of opinion about yeah sounds also I mean I think you can see if you look across the ecosystem you can see different networks have kind of a different stages along this path and having some growing pains as well like if you look maybe at what you know

cosmos has experienced over the last few months and what in a way what you see is a path towards more decentralized power and it's a it's a bit messy sometimes I think but that's interesting so let's move on to this validator community the tezo's validator community once tells us the first POS system am I wrong in thinking that it was or was it the first big one Thanks there's like steam it I guess before that a well like NXT or whatever that one I think there's something called NXT and then there's also something called like pure coin or something but the thing I'd say about POS is there's a huge misunderstanding about like so there's I feel like

there's deep Oz which is like yeah delegated proof of stake mm-hmm that's interesting one the best way I've ever heard it is that it's kind of like inside baseball masquerading as civil resistance right that's a that one is I think not the the goal here right the thing that's unique with us I think is they that it has between 400 to 400 years it's definitely largest validator community in turn I assume and if you actually go look on a map of like where all the dog eaters are like you know there's really good geographic distribution but yeah in general you know the value community in tells us is like been through a lot and seen a lot and from early on I feel like the thing that difference you know has

always differentiate us from other heuristic networks is just simply to speak focus on self baking and and people hobbyists baking and stuff like that rather than on pure professionalization and data center based you know validation and so that's definitely like one of the backbones of the network and it's and it segues really tightly into you the governance question because the governance process is very high it requires a very high consensus in order to move anything forward and that gives a lot of say to this very diverse validator community which ranges from exchanges to professionalize auditors to hedge funds to you know people with just like a

spare Linux machine that they're running a valued job so there's like sort of this really they're sort of this the amendment process is very much like mediating the values and interests of all those those different folks and you you just used the term baking which is unique to Tasos and basic project what does what does baking mean what is a baker baking equals takings rights yeah yeah I mean the joke is that that's the one you know French origin project so um that's what let's call it bacon instead of us thinking okay and the bakers are the validators basically our block producers yeah so I think I think that

there's a bit more mainly meaning to the words sort of mining I don't in my head mind when you mind you you work a lot and if you're lucky you will find a gold nugget or something while baking it's it's it's a craft so you just need to know how to do it and then it's effortless everyone especially if you're confined at home and you you put in some ingredients and you get out some other ingredients I guess so this was a try to put a big difference in between the mining and anybody even with raspberry pie at home can make blocks is what kind of POS system like what is the underlying consensus in antennas is it

tender mint or is it something else it's something else maybe Ouroboros system worse is a more popular algorithm that is similar to ours but they were developed at the same time they share a lot of ideas but also several because it's a unique as you say the original Tesla's prefer steak is diff so that's the beauty of this whole time and processed thing like actually the nature of the contoso algorithm has changed as well not like massively but like it's you know it's like if it comes like didn't yeah yeah like it's not a totally new model but but but all I'll say is that the original version of this proof of steak was actually very very

similar to like normal Nakamoto consensus so like basically it's like imagine you took Bitcoin and instead of Tina sort of your proof of work that's the longest chain you said we'll just like you know basically how people endorse you know the endorse blocks and then we'll slash people who try to double bake and try to endorse or bake multiple blocks right and so basically it's very similar so the longest chain based you know consensus algorithm like you sort of say there wasn't there's a new consensus algorithm used was that like the one that was it was launched with or was it actually changed mid no changed which like there was a big rosy block there is a block there's a amendment called Babylon and you know the block before Babylon was activated

with the network was baking with you know Emmy which is called a me and then the block at Babylon started the network switched over to Emmy Plus which is what the new one is an Emmy by the way is named after Emmy Noether no either and if you read that name you know it's basically spells no ether so our yeah it's another this actually leads us I think in a nice way to the governance and how what an amendment actually is in the system because you've mentioned it twice now our amendments like a I piece

are they like proposals are they I'm trying to come up with I'm trying to picture an equivalent are they more like upgrade packages upgrades okay normally an amendment is a piece of a come of code or now so maybe one day we'll change the definition of what's an amendment but for now it's a piece of a common code so it might start as a marked down written somewhere with a few ideas but you cannot propose that to write it down you test it to run it and to do to make sure no mistakes and then you can propose it okay the network so it injects an operation and network with your proposal and then by that you start the an amendment process that is for now

is a three months process where we do a bunch of the testing and revision and then after if everything goes well people are going to vote several times and at the end of the three months they would activate your piece of code are there is there a single client implementation of tezo's or there multiple so for another is one main node that is the one in oh camel okay and like I said there is a so basically we split because of the dis design technical is split into parts you really have what we call the shell that does the storage and the networking and then you have the protocol so because of this clear separation actually the people some people came in to the Foundation's

that we'd like to write a shell in rust what'd you say and as soon as you can take a piece of a camel protocol again what we call the economic protocol and run it on your shell you're good you're good that's what they're doing and does that does that almost take the form of a new client then like would that be an option for somebody who wanted to like it would be synced together and they could run it that it will speak the same protocol over the network the same operations okay so the amendments are it sounds like they're they're not quite the full update upgrade code finished but they're like they are they are they have to be finished okay they like you because you

there's like this three month period you wouldn't she yeah yeah but they're yeah but it's no no once you put it in it like you you put it into the process and like basically people propose it it gets accepted hopefully maybe not you know whatever and then you know it goes through this this I mean originally it was like if anyone proposed that saying would then be put up for a vote whatever but basically now it's you know you put an amendment in it goes through the amendment cycle for three months and then it's automatically activated if it's approved basically in two different votes and both those votes have you know thresholds at which they you know

participation and have a supermajority that need to be met how did you get how do you in the in the governance side of things how do you get engagement like is it a is it a sort of active enough community that you actually have a lot of voting or do you find the turnout medium I think it's to the delegation like to answer very very directly but the permission has actually been pretty impressive and as Marco says it's because the piece of delegation basically like as a share of the stake I mean in the first one we did you know Nathan's it was like 88 percent of the stake which you know when the threshold was at the time 80 percent but and that's about 200 some odd Baker's voting

basically so and that's on behalf of 10 so at the time I was like maybe said tens of thousands of people in the community in the more recent ones I don't think it was that high I think it was in the 70s or so I'd have to actually go back and check but we've never even come close to missing the quorum and the super majority I'm sure at some point we'll have to think about stuff like that in word but stuff that we've taken some as a community taken some preventative measures or yeah basically trying to make the amendment process more resilient to certain types of attacks and types of flaws and terms of how the quorum adjust it and stuff like that one thing also is that exists is basically this web

application called toast Agora where basically there's like its kind of its kind of like research meats T creds paella in a way so it has like a lot of the different folks from you know whether it's nomadic or you know diem or Arthur or whomever the language teams application developers it's a tooling developers and cetera all writing about different stuff that they're working on different ideas that they have ways to improve ciao so stuff like that and then you have like a sort of a visualization tool that also contains information about the amendments and stuff like that so people can understand what so what's going on and in the future I think that that will include a lot more functionality around trying to help with like long term planning or other kinds of governance

tools like signaling voting and stuff like that down the road as well it would be really useful but those are like a couple of I think that's like a one place where a lot of you can see a lot of the stuff sort of play out and where a lot of ideas get surfaced or get like revealed first before they make their way into the amendment process that actually that's funny somebody went in the preparation for this interview somebody actually mentioned that your governance dashboard and UI was really nicely built and designed and was curious who who did that and it's it's been a group effort and big effort there's been a big effort to make sure it's a neutral platform as well by the way so it's really governed in like a multi-stakeholder in the long term will

be more apparent I think but it's very much governed in like a multi-stakeholder way and very neutral very conservative way so like one of the fears of POS systems is this idea of like like centralization of power do you have mitigations to like avoid some sort of centralization or some sort of yeah inflationary force that like put some more power in the hands of few I think like a lot of that probably has to just be community efforts to move dela Gators off of exchanges and things like that into self custody and even small transitions that people off of exchanges and things I feel like is probably a good thing right so there's a

lot of people I mean most of the stake here most of the tokens are staked either delegated or owned and yeah the fees that delegation service take is they're pretty pretty very hard I guess that was that was I I guess in my mind I had the idea that people were not all delegating but if you have a high sort of delegation rate then yeah I guess everybody is benefiting somewhat equally this is that if you do not take a part in that you are finished well then you are rewarded if you so I kind of want to move on to like how tells us is thinking about privacy and they're not of proof stuff mark your cryptographer at nomadic

so maybe you can actually speak a little bit about like where is where does privacy or ZK peas exist in the tezo system so as of now it's fairly simple because they don't so often so they I hope they would be and it would be the next amendment and so the first thing we're going to introduce is a sapling photocurrent which when you get fancy cash and it's a loss to erection spoken privately so basically it allows to exchange any kind of token privately so it's a first step that will allow to I guess the most simple example if you do an sto maybe the people that participate

in this sto don't want everybody to know what happens so you can do an sto in the private fashion with donate some time so that's just that maybe is worth pointing out so the way we are integrating a sapling is inside the smart contract language so basically every smart contract will be able to have its own shielded pool with Shelby tokens this that I actually I did read about this so this implementation of sapling I'm glad we covered like what amendment our because this would be I guess it's is it finished or is it a work in progress we're at what stage is it it's been finished for six months

oh wow so it's already been like it would be in the next amendment I guess that would then go into review yeah what does it mean though to implement sapling like I heard I read that it was like implementation of sapling into kind of an upgrade an amendment of tit for test but like is it's not going to it's you're not sort of saying that you're gonna enable tez tez ease to move into shield it accounts or something like that right this is not like your all the sudden tezo's is a privacy coin and so what is what does that implementation

mean then I guess it touches on two parts it was mainly two parts and they represent pretty well the two per person that works on that mark and right but there was one part was the understanding sapling understanding the specification that they wrote for the protocol which is very well written and it's very very complex and I think marketing done excellent work at that and then there was a lot of plumbing a lot a lot of plumbing like the boring parts of making languages work I mean rhasta no camo and then making it efficient in the protocol and a bunch of other stuff that that's where I but did you rewrite sapling in oh camel is that what you would have had

to do part of it the the people at the electric coin company they were nice enough not only to design a great protocol but also to implement it in rust in the last robbery and to make it to make it available open source with a reasonable license so we just we started from that we took that and then we built the pieces that were missing that's what we call it done integration because we took a large chunk of their work but there was another large chunk that we had to do on top of that and just mark was the the main driver behind that so basically what what we started working with was a su cash like Riley from the plastic ash which basically

gives us all the primitive what we call primitive in cryptography which our signature zero knowledge proof etc so all of that we add to bang and then what we did we there is a piece of code that you will be able to see in their monthly fiscal discipline which is basically putting all of these primitives together to have like two mains operation ones which would go to the client which is faster transaction which order you want a hundred rice an amount and you've got a transaction and one that is going into the protocol which is called as a update and what is does is that it takes what we call a searching state which is

basically a blockchain you take a snapshot of the cash production it's a sampling site it takes a transaction it verifies the validity of the transaction applies the transaction and gives out the updated site so we need both those paths put one in the client and one in the photo pan and as Marcus said the one in the photo card is not done as a flash transaction but as a maquette son of God and so we created new Mickelson tied for sapling stipend sucking transaction Manuel's office as a so now in McCann son you can basically the storage of your phone can endure what we call dirty pool which could be seen as a snapshot of gas production but it's not it's not

actually connected to the sea cash blockchain at all right yeah and every smartphone heart disease on pool that is not connected to a source I got it I'm trying to I'm like after you say this I'm just trying to think of other use cases like if somebody would would it be something like an outside developer team wanted to build something that integrated with tezo's and use sapling is this sort of I'm trying to picture like what that would actually look like well really you can you can transfer you can think of it like that you can transfer any type of token as long as you are able to write down the rules that govern

you can buy and sell this token but you can't make tezo's dezzy's private no you actually can't because because the whole - so to be more competitive shoes the whole to buy and sell dizzy is basically giving one test or giving one test batch right I see so I can make a smart contract that says if you give this contract 5,000 yeah and you want to create five as I would say okay so you're creating you basically allow for anonymity pools to be built on top of Tesla's in a way and you could you send your tessie's into it and if there were enough people inside it would

potentially like obfuscate the fact that your taxis are in there okay I can see two men use cases one which weighs macro we talk quite a lot with the small adoption team that we have here in the magic and it's a steals because it's really the being singers us now and there are actually pretty big legal constraints that privacy can another on use case would be to actually exchange TC way and I don't know if someone will do that I guess someone there are several way to do that so maybe we'll see second direction second but we really insist on giving out

mikan-san instruction and people do what they want with that alright so what what was the challenge of doing this you sort of said you know it's a different language so you're kind of like you know taking something that was written all in breath bringing it into oh camel but were there any other challenges or what was it like to do this so uh I guess the well shoot challenges the first challenges was that it's a pretty big protocol and Mystica quite a time so I have to go through the spec for a long time and make sure I didn't miss any points and then there was one big challenge which was the storage part basically as I said we have to under abduction which is a UTX abduction yeah which is thank each

and allow us none of this in a storage that was made for small truck which are supposed to under a few values basically so we had to quite heavily optimize the storage luckily this problematic and already came up with the bitmap synthesis which is a big data structure that we don't enforce my contract but basically usually your smart storage is not on that lazily in the sense that you take the storage to deserialize everything you work on that and then you see I realize everything and put back in place because it's meant to hold of two integers or maybe a little higher but not much more so we had to send all of that to make it under in a lazy way meaning that we just pick

out the part that we need to add like the transaction so I guess this was a pretty big challenge and under some data structure but our bit more complicated than usual like knuckle trees and it's a dog I'm wondering did the size of like because you're if you're integrating sapling I guess you're the idea here is you actually be running like generating ZK snark proving keys and all the like this whole thing the snark would actually have to be generated like you know we've heard about the challenges of doing that on other smart contract platforms just because of the sheer size of it does that like does that matter in this context is this also something that you had to take into account so the size of the storage definitely matters

because the Tendo user by fives yeah but we couldn't do anything about that so we didn't do anything in the sense that the storage will hold in early with the number of transaction that is applied and it has to be that way and it's quite from the motor all because otherwise you don't have privacy yeah so any optimization to the storage in that sense it's not possible because it likes privacy right because if you don't keep all the noise basically you don't have notice and you don't have privacy so there's also the storage will go what we could optimize is the way we undone it so that we don't this area everything I just speak out the past we need to apply our transaction got it do you do um like do you keep up

to date on all of the more recent your knowledge proof like papers and imp like ideas coming out you know you decided to implement which is a finished in a way finished proven thing but are you also considering like implementing some of the newer stuff even coming out of ECC yes we're definitely are so not for this up right the thing with your knowledge is that when you need to implement a system and you need to write everything in circuit form to be able to prove that statement so all of this is quite big work so if we just wanted to do transaction with shielded tokens we didn't in any of these sub King uses a

very efficient hoping system to assist in which major drawback being that you need a trusted setup but the trust itself has already be done so basically it's removed because we're actually using the trusted set about - so it removes the big four back so there's no reason to use anything else but for future project we are looking into other things and one we starting looking at and we actually have a new idea 5se team that is working on that for two weeks is very recent it's called viago so it's a trust let's see ten system which is obviously really practical for us and as or get the four months compared to what sixteen so you

just mentioned Virgo Virgo where is that from like do you have maybe we can share a link or something in the show notes that's also it some people from Bethel and Texas and a Young University is going to appear at this year - P security and privacy compounds Thanks what are you doing with Virgo exactly so I would come back to the what we are about to do with something is basically and Jing one she'll be pull and make it concerned that one but really the next step would be imagine that you have let's say a stable coin which would be horizontal as a token under under

destruction and with this table coin you want to a privacy so you can use something for that and let's say that someone else is doing an SEO and create your she'd be fooled with the token or something some part of the company not done so if you want to use your shitty table coin to buy this token I'll actually you can't be suffering because we are only able to do cons well inside one pool and there is a pretty big technical reason behind that is that to be able to do that we need to be able to endure novice trial computation industry or knowledge proof why is that is because you're basically you need to be

able to do capsulate inside those you wanna check with all the value that you have on one side and not the value on the other side so to be able to know that the guy is paying let's say your 10 your holes to get one share and then check the condition that it's ok or not and so to do this it's well it's technically bit more complicated because you have to be able to endure arbitrary computation and you need to be much more flexible that what we are with trusted set up systems so for this we need a Israel trust last system or universal system and the reason why we are looking into go well first it has very nice assumption so it does those two same

security assumption as a five base system like they using stuff where it doesn't have to use all those pairings etc which are really good for efficiency but a bit more complicated one ton basically the only topic relatives are ashes which really simple that's we got let's say the advantage it has of fine based system is that it computes directly on the big fine finite field of the characteristics so meaning that the the computation that you do in the circuits can be done in the finite field that looks like a lot those you can use in ho sixteen which means that you can do very efficient in zero allege ATT of

operations but basically it means technically that we could reuse all of the work that we have been circling all of the complicated circuit that we are inserting and under in the whole knowledge all the cryptographic primitives that we are using in sapling which then we can basically glue those on roof from a very different system to a sapling system to unable to do a supreme connection in between poles and computing zero knowledge and the balance and for some price so that is the long term plan but it's just a plan from now or there is nothing great just started to look into that but basically it would

load to to extend with a minimal technical burden what we have incepting to make it use in between poles nice what kind of timeline do you even imagine this having though like you say it's not in this amendment so like are you thinking like two years out one year out like how often are your amendments actually about the minimal timeline is three months for an amendment okay but don't you see this will not be done in the next a moment I would say it's two years from now okay and in the meantime we have something else that we would like to release regarding privacy which is the alleged membership that was

talking about and this this it comes from discussion with adoption team it's basically so now we are able to let some people create that silicon but most of the time for stos etc you do need to have some access control for that all you got reason and so the ownership is simply that you can commit to a set and shine that is not public but you can focus your knowledge that you are in this set without telling who you are so it will be able to do access control and machine deapool which it is done not quite that he obviously would be make the silicon useless in general access control is a

very it's a basic building blocks for for smart contracts this is this sort of a mitigation of some potential privacy leak if people were to use sapling is that what you just explained it was like if they were to use this integration of sapling there could be some ways of like the users being discovered and this is a way to control for that now exactly yeah that's cool is there any other privacy tech that might be interesting for us to chat about that's actually being built on Tesla's and it doesn't necessarily have to have zero knowledge proof that it's heart but is there anything else privacy focused so far no we have an unsigned 14 and we are looking at that with and to

basically do - 14 but it's right so we are still at very designe size because it it could be quite controversial because it's not abuse since we have the delegation system it's not abuse that we want to write the words right it's like if you're you're representing for the state you don't know what's this what's up that's interesting that's actually that's that's such an interesting point that's come up a few times like this idea of validation and privacy there's these use cases where these cases where you're like yeah it would be really great if you know people could privately delegate to a validator or if they could privately vote on something which we do sort of see in the real world but when

it comes to the validation world as far as I've understood a lot of the crypto economics are based around transparency in a way like reputation matters and so people need to be able to see who votes for what and so when you add privacy you actually in the in certain cases like potentially undermine like other levers - keeping some sort of control in the system and I guess you're facing a similar kind of question it is it's a found because of the consensus parts you can actually do private psyching it's quite complicated because you should do it but it well first obviously you need to be able to produce the ownership that UBF correctly that's

one thing another thing is that you have a huge side channel in the sense that if I own 20% of the stage yeah I will produce 20% of the block even if everything is in thermal knowledge it doesn't make sense to hide that if I can see the state that everybody has but the I sexual you paper but under stats but it's quite complicated and we do not plan to implement it because it's not yours yeah you do get this kind of interesting questions so it is funny when me usually you have a problem and you try really hard to find a solution and so we've been talking with these researchers and they were like yeah so we have 10 solutions but do you really have a problem

two hours of this the first time we met for example they were Russian there is something like when you're a hammer everything's a nail something like that shut it yeah so for example you were saying are you afraid that you would not see what you're these people validators are doing maybe a concentration of power except this is one concern yeah the concern maybe is for which privacy would be actually very good is are you afraid of bribing people buying boats or selling boats so it really depends on on the on the network and the community kind of community that you have so maybe

right now privacy is not especially at the beginning I think remember where Jacob was saying we spent a good good amount of time understanding and explaining to others how the voting works so I think at that point not having any privacy was actually very good because everybody could just see the votes or who is doing what and how it was very educational let's say maybe in one year it would be very important to have some form of ferrocene vote show that would be more so I don't know we're trying to it so that's why we are we're studying solutions but we're not have any or any of the other teams also working on privacy related projects that you know of so we know we know we work

pretty closely with the people a great team and we know that they've been working at extending what we have now that is one contract one asset that is shielded to have a smart contract with the multi acid shift so basically we'll have you can imagine it as having Z cash today with the kinds of different colors and you can exchange only tokens of the right colors interesting so this is like this is extending on your implementation of sampling then yeah so they will need to change the suit they will need to modify sapling so they will need to change the circuit and they're with me to redo the process setup if they decide to go with

okay these are the advantage that you will have any larger shielded poles because you can sort of merge several functionally equivalent contracts that they do more less the same thing but for different assets you can just put them all together and you will enjoy better privacy because you have a larger memory intercept yeah it sounds like cool and this is crypt um who's doing this Chris goes and friends alright well thank you all for coming on the show and explaining to all of us a little bit more about tezo's and where it's at today also its relationship to privacy and how you know you're also looking to integrate zero knowledge proof sent to the system yeah thanks for having us on

thanks for having us thank you cool and to our listeners thanks for listening [Music]