Episode 177: Unwrapping Optimism with Ben and Mark

Zero Knowledge

This week, Anna and James chat with Ben Jones and Mark Tyneway from Optimism, the builders of Optimistic Ethereum.

The interview continues the series of L2-focused episodes we have been airing on the Zero Knowledge Podcast and comes just as Optimism gears up for launch. Anna, James, Ben and Mark discuss the inner workings of their Optimistic Rollup, diving deep into concepts like data availability, the fraud proof, the role of the sequencer and the rollup’s complex relationship with layer-one. Ben and Mark then lay out their vision for rollup-centric Ethereum and how rollup interoperability is the next major focus area for the ecosystem.

Here are some links for this episode:

• Handshake Protocol with Mark Tyneway, Zero Knowledge episode 132
• Rayonism, the sharded rollup proposal Mark mentioned
• Zk-zk-rollup & zk.money with Zac and Joe from Aztec, Zero Knowledge episode 176
• zkEVM & zkPorter with Matter Labs, Zero Knowledge episode 175
• John Adler on Optimistic vs ZK Rollup and the data availability problem, Zero Knowledge episode 151
• zkSessions: Why Sequencers are the Future - Mark Tyneway (Optimism), zkSessions from March 2021
• The upcoming scaling Ethereum hackathon Ben mentioned.

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Thanks to this week’s sponsor, Least Authority.

In addition to their security reviews of innovative projects such as Loopring, Mina, and Filecoin, this May, Least Authority will be releasing a whitepaper on ZKAPs – Zero-Knowledge Access Passes. ZKAPs is an anonymous, token-based authorization protocol that facilitates an online exchange of value while disconnecting the necessary payment data from the day-to-day usage service data of customers.

Also coming this summer is the MoonMath Manual – a beginner’s guide to zk-SNARKS, which introduces the theory and application of zk-SNARKs from various angles.

Signup for Least Authority's newsletter to stay in touch and be notified of the release of the ZKAPs Whitepaper, PrivateStorage, the MoonMath Manual, continuous security audit reports, job openings and more. Visit https://leastauthority.com/newsletter to join their mailing list.

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