Event Recap: Privacy on Polkadot

On April 29th we invited the Polkadot community to the Privacy on Polkadot event, hosted by Zero Knowledge Validator!

This was our first public event for Polkadot after the more private ZKValidator Privacy Working group last year (see our baseline report). During the event, we hosted several projects working on privacy and zkp focused projects in the Polkadot ecosystem.

The event was funded by the Polkadot treasury and had Zero Knowledge Podcast as a media partner.

Key Takeaways:

• The ecosystem is growing rapidly with 400+ projects where Defi has the biggest share of around ⅓, followed by identity solutions, NFTs and privacy.
• When funding is not a problem the next challenge is to attract talent
• Manta Network and zCloak are using ZKPs to make private transfers and AMMs as well as general private computation possible on Polkadot
• Patract provides ZKP related infrastructure
• Automata and Phala are using TEEs to achieve privacy

Event Schedule

The event kicked off with a ZKValidator introduction, and a fireside chat with Anna, Dieter and Fabi followed by 5 lightning talks. Check out the entire playlist on youtube, here is a run down of what was discussed:

Fireside Chat: Anna Rose, Fabian Gompf and Dieter Fishbein

Here the youtube link.

Fabi and Dieter give short intro and proceed to chat about:

• How early tutorials and comparative ease of use compared with ZKPs attracted TEE focussed projects to Polkadot
• Growth of the ecosystem with 400+ projects where Defi has the biggest share of around ⅓, followed by identity solutions, NFTs and privacy.
• Challenges for getting more privacy on Polkadot. Technology is not the problem, it gives more freedom to devs compared to other blockchains. ZKPs are primarily for scaling and privacy but scaling is at the moment not a problem and privacy is often not a priority for people when building a new application.
• The role of Web3 Foundation and Parity in pushing for new pallets that enable privacy preserving applications.
• What could the community do to get more privacy focussed projects into the ecosystem?
• What should teams know about the Web3 Grants Program which funds open source development and the Substrate Builders Program
• What are the requirements to get started with Substrate
• Where to start the process of finding a team

Plug and Play Privacy for Polkadot — Shumo Chu, Manta Network

Here the youtube link.

Shumo Chu, co-founder of Manta Network and assistant Prof at UCSB talks about the current stage and vision of Manta Network. The goal is to become the plug and play privacy solution for Polkadot using zkSNARKs. The project is going through 3 phases. Manta 1.0 is focussing on anonymous payments, similar to zcash with the key differentiator that it aims to support all Polkadot assets. A prototype of the protocol exists and the team is currently working on an interface. Shumo shows performance metrics and gives a high level overview. He also gives a brief outlook on the future roadmap: Manta 2.0 will be an anonymous AMM DEX using SNARKs and Manta 3.0 a private smart contract platform.

Empowering dApps with Seamless Privacy and High Assurance — Deli Gong, Automata

Here the youtube link.

Automata is a decentralized middleware service protocol that utilizes hardware and algorithmic methods (SGX and Oblivious RAM) to provide privacy. Deli Gong starts off by outlining the problem of privacy on blockchains e.g. linking wallets and information leakage in the mempool. He continues to describe Automatas solution to provide shielded, unbiased computation which turns the enclave into an agent that the user can trust. Their services can be integrated with existing dApps without modifications. Deli also presents Witness, a off chain governance system with privacy features that allows users to vote without revealing their identity.

Presenting Patract — Lipeng Yue

Here the youtube link.

Patract’s mission is to accelerate the adoption of the WASM stack for smart contract usage. Patract does this by providing infrastructure and considers ZKP tech to be an important building block for private applications. Lipeng gives background on how developers currently use ZKP tech on Ethereum and proceeds to explain how contracts work on Substrate which allows for various types of models. Lipeng presents how the zkMega project can help bring support for important primitives to Polkadot and shows benchmarks of the different approaches. He also talks about ZoPatract — an off chain toolbox for zkMega and ink! based on Zokrates.

Data Privacy Protection with a zk-STARK VM — Dr. Xiao Zhang, zCloak Network

Here the youtube link.

zCloak wants to challenge the current default model where people have to send data to third parties in exchange for services. Dr. Xiao Zhang motivates his presentation with the question whether people can use their data for computation without sending them to third parties and shows that proofs of computational integrity like SNARKs and STARKs can be a solution. He explains why zCloak chose STARKs and not SNARK and gives a brief overview of how a blockchain network powered by a zk-STARK VM for general purpose computation can work. One major barrier of entry for building ZKP applications is that circuits/AIRs often have to be “handwritten” for every new program and zCloak tackles this problem. Xiao talks about zCloaks plan to build a parachain or parathread and provide STARK proof generation and verification to other parachains. Potential applications include Defi (real world credit score), identity (prove attributes privately), biometrics and NFTs.

Introducing Phala Network — Marvin Tong, Phala

Here the youtube link.

Phala Network is a privacy preserving blockchain based on substrate and aims to become a parachain on Kusama and Polkadot. Confidential smart contract is the core use case of the Phala blockchain but Phala is also a cloud computing platform. Marvin Tong gives a high level intro to Phalas core technology, motivates why TEEs have been chosen over zkp and mpc, shows the Phala blockchain TEE hybrid architecture and explains the various roles in the system. Phala is Integrating TEEs to the consensus of the Phala blockchain. Marvin also gives a sneak peak on Web3 Analytics, a decentralised alternative to Google analytics.

Event Stats and Participant Feedback

The event attracted over 200 signups. Of these 89 attended from 60 countries and we asked participants to provide feedback via a google form. 100% of respondents rated the event good or very good and all feedback comments were positive. We experienced some hiccups with the Hopin platform but thankfully this went largely unnoticed. Around half of respondents said that privacy only has a low to medium importance at the moment and the rest rated it of high importance. We asked for the biggest blockers for privacy on Polkadot. The answers can be summarised as follows:

• UX challenges
• Regulatory issues
• Focus on the more popular DeFi and NFT space
• Awareness around privacy as a business model

When asked what unique opportunities Polkadot can offer to privacy & zkp projects, participants noted huge momentum around the upcoming Kusama/Polkadot parachain launch. Polkadot can use the attention to amplify adoption of privacy & zkp projects.

We funded the event with a treasury proposal and 83% would consider supporting another such proposal in the future.

Manta Network also showed a very interesting privacy survey during their presentation. The survey had 404 participants. 84% are concerned about the link between identity and address. 90% have inspected other peoples addresses, 72% have avoided making a tx due to privacy concerns.

Conclusion

Our goal is to promote privacy and ZKP adoption and the event was a great step towards that. We had great talks from prominent guests and participants seemed to love it. We can’t wait to see you all at the next one!