Technical Intro to Blockchain (Part 4)
“It’s like magic.”
— Laurence Kirk of Extropy.io
Zero-Knowledge Proofs!
On the 11th of November 2020, the Oxford Blockchain Society hosted its fifth event of the year — an Intro to Blockchain (for technical folk) in collaboration with OxWEST. This event was led by Laurence Kirk of Extropy.io — a blockchain development consultancy in Oxford and is part of a four-part series on blockchain. Join us for a look into how blockchain works and how to start understanding and using the technology. We’ll go through everything from smart contracts to running nodes and building DApps (decentralised apps).
About the talk
Laurence took us through associative blockchain applications. He went on to discuss one of his favourite topics: Zero-knowledge proofs. This included a brief intro to SNARKS, recursive SNARKS, trusted setups and alternatives to trusted setups. Laurence also treated us to a bit of post quantum cryptography. This ends the four-part technical series. Look how far we have come! We started our first session getting only introduced to what blockchains are, Bitcoin, Ethereum, then we coded our first smart contract, followed by a DApp and rounded off things by exploring the current frontiers of blockchain research. Well done everyone, and a massive thank you to Laurence Kirk and Tom Dwyer from Extropy.io for teaching us so much!
Recording
Slides
Extropy.io:
More educational material from Extropy.io:
Remix IDE:
Alex Pinto’s blog:
Future events
We have a huge event planned with Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin. Stay tuned and visit our Eventbrite!
Join us!
This year’s President is Brandon Severin, a PhD student researching A.I. for Quantum Computing. We’re looking for keen beans to join the committee and help advance and educate about blockchain. If you’re interested, email president@oxfordblockchain.co.uk
Mailing List
Sign up via our new website (ooo) — www.oxfordblockchain.co.uk
Looking forward to seeing you at the next one. — Best, Brandon Severin
