Cryptography Notes/Resources

Non-Technical

Aggregated Blockchains: A New Thesis → Polygon feb 24
Electronification, Trading, and Crypto → Uniswap → Decentralization.
A Cambrian Explosion of Crypto Proofs
- Symmetric Encryption is Quantum proof?
- Takeaway: asymmetric circuit-specific systems (Groth16) are shortest, shorter than all asymmetric universal ones, and all symmetric systems.
- Post Quantum Commitment Scheme → Merkle Trees.
A Brief History of Money
- A medium of exchange is the asset we use to directly settle transactions. This is the easiest hurdle to clear. You can use Starbucks rewards points to buy a latte, so Starbucks points function as a medium of exchange. But of course, Starbucks points aren't a great store of value—people know this instinctively and don't store their savings into Starbucks points. This is not just because it's impractical; people are aware that Starbucks might modify their rewards program to devalue these points, and there's not a stable market for selling saved up points. → The US dollar can also be devaluated by some “Starbucks”.
- Money is just a bubble that never pops.
The Cypherpunks
Satoshi Nakamoto
SNARK proving ASIC

Proof generation and verification: ZK-rollup operators must produce validity proofs for transaction batches, which is resource-intensive. Verifying zero-knowledge proofs on Mainnet also costs gas (~ 500,000 gas).
An advantage of zero-knowledge proofs is that proofs can verify other proofs. For example, a single ZK-SNARK can verify other ZK-SNARKs. Such "proof-of-proofs" are called recursive proofs and dramatically increase throughput on ZK-rollups.
⚠️Producing validity proofs requires specialized hardware, which may encourage centralized control of the chain by a few parties.