Daniel Hwang: The Aleo Advantage | 14th Oct 2023 | Sunway University | ETHKL 2023

all right ladies and gentlemen we're going to kick off our first session today from ELO blockchain please put your hands together for Mr Daniel hang from Korea ladies and gentlemen he's the validator ecosystem lead for Alo yeah it's on yeah there you go take it away Daniel cool okay um yeah hi everyone I'm Daniel I I help out with the validator and the ZK mining or SL ZK proving ecosystem on Alo I'll just do a really quick introduction of myself I I used to lead the protocols team at Stak fish uh and led the special projects team at f2pool so F2 pool was the largest Bitcoin mining pool in the world and steak fish was the largest ethereum uh validator non-custodial validator in the world um and so I guess right that's a good connection to ethereum um and maybe my personal connection with Alo is I when I um was studying cryptography in grad school Matt green was uh my adviser um do you guys know who Matt Green is no one uh so Matt Green was one of the co-authors to the zcash paper along with Ian Meyers who uh who was also a professor at one of my universities um and then they came out with a paper in 2018 called zero knowledge execution which was basically allowing smart contract privacy um and so a bunch of the co-authors to that paper specifically Howard who um left their PHD programs and then started Alo maybe the direct connection to the ethereum ecosystem and broader ecosystems I would say are are twofold one is obviously the ZK um aspect is the scaling um the scaling that's been offered but also I think the second most exciting thing about these ZK ecosystems is the establishment of a brand new infrastructure class so if you're familiar with right Bitcoin and the P chains you have P miners um with POS we have what are called validators um and just coincidentally right like I had worked quite extensively in both ecosystems um I and now with the rise of ZK we have a third infrastructure provider class uh called ZK miners um and so it's it's quite exciting um it's quite exciting to be a part of this sort of brand new um infrastructure sort of development I think a lot of what um the ZK chains or ZK l2s or ZK ecosystems would say Beyond some of the scalability affordances that ZK gives you is that you have this sort of like um blue blue ocean opportunity um and then obviously like p style ZK mining is right the beginners beginners um benefit from it so um this is a a pretty interesting slide sort of for the evolution of what we've been seeing in the crypto ecosystem um so you could see right like I I kind of broke it down into infrastructure classes um that we've been seeing over the past last 10 plus years like I I myself was I used to be a big Dogecoin minor and and Bitcoin miner long time ago like 2013 but um so what we we see is sort of like this not just the infrastructure class Evolution um but we also see sort of like the the possibility for um more I guess like technology improvements um so what we have is right these these old like com based like um cryptocurrencies like digicash hashcash and then Bitcoin was able to solve a pretty critical element in incentivizing good behavior with uh proof of work um and eventually right a lot of development had come there and specifically with ZK uh we saw zcash right essentially a fork of Bitcoin that allowed this privacy uh to be provided um and then right what why ethereum uh existed was this programmability aspect and so with the rise of ethereum and its transition eventually to POS uh we have now um validators right with this ecosystem um I think a very um sort of rudimentary way of imagining some of these zl1's or like Alo is that you have now the ability to have this sort of privacy and scalability layer uh with ZK to also have have right the programmability that you have with um with ethereum and these types of smart contracts and so I think maybe one way to think about it is right this is sort of like the next domain of um Evolution for what is possible on this sort of technical infrastructure stack uh mind you right zero knowledge proofs has been around since the 1980s right and and only recently have we sort of seen enough techn technological advance es to make use of that and both mechanism design um and hardware and so I I think one of the sort of side goals or side effects of this in incentivization mechanism that cryptocurrencies and their Associated blockchains provide so well is that you have this sort of Hardware infrastructure that's being developed um really really quick um anecdote is like I used to do bioinformatics research for about six years um when I was was doing a lot of distributed systems work and right we had used right ZK in the process of something called like fully homomorphic encryption which is basically you can run computations on encrypted data um the problem that we had was that let's say we had six different labs and we all wanted to share right genomic data with each other um and run computation on it but right we didn't want to give up our data because it was expensive so like very specifically what I did research was on human gut microbiome and you get that from poop it's very expensive to get get human poop um and so what what happened with with FH the problem with FH is that um you have to encrypt the data before you can run computation on it but then you don't have the ability to verify whether or not that data that you put in and encrypted is is uh is good data right you can put just put trash and so we had used ZK to um prove certain properties of the data that we had um in order to uh um put it in and and have the peace of mind that we're not all getting screwed by each other and so what we had had to do is right at least in America we had to write these like lengthy National Science Foundation grants to be able to get enough money to run ZK on uh on the cloud and and so I think that is a small example of what's so exciting about now this sort of like Perfect Storm of what we had seen evolve in the p with these infrastructure classes notably what we have now with ZK mining that has the ability to give us sort of like this Marketplace of service providers that can kind of help people like me if it was like seven years ago um and so I think also right the the the interesting point of why cryptocurrencies exists is mainly to have this sort of incentivization mechanism that now can be going directly to infrastruct an infrastructure class that can be sort of like getting paid for their work um and and the direct example there is right back in 2013 when I was buing Bitcoin we were all doing it because right we wanted to burn down the banks Etc right but but the reality is that like we all did it ideologically and we had no idea like what bitcoin's price would be nowadays what you would have with Bitcoin mining and and and specifically right when I was working with F2 pole Bitcoin miners right and the min Farms don't necessarily have to have that ideological resolve to sort of be participating in that work they get paid for it and so there's a very key point in how good behavior as designed by these systems has to be incentivized and that incentivization allows these large companies like bitm to exist right bitm manufactures like 90% of the entire world's PW as6 for Bitcoin um and they're only able to grow so large and develop this very specialized Hard Ware um that the uh because they were getting paid for it right bitcoin's rise in speculative value or or sorry value is is what drove it and so with sort of like this um this this idea of Technology advancement that we had gotten to um with the appropriate people who have largely right like contributed most of the seminal work on Zer knowledge proof research uh at least from the cryptography side as we had seen with Matt Green Ian Meyers um Chessa and the rest like and Howard and we also have this ability of understanding how infrastructure does evolve and the next step is sort of like this programmability that we have with with privacy uh with with ZK and so I think personally it's quite exciting to me uh right over the past like 10 10 years we've been seeing this evolve um and um we're we're beginning to see sort of this this this work in effect um and so I can okay I'll describe some of this I I already described a bit of this but we have like the sort of like this maxed out sort of um scale on privacy and programmability right ethereum was created because Bitcoin was not programmable enough um zcash was a fork of Bitcoin that allowed privacy and then now you have Pro both programmability and privacy and I obviously described some of the brief mechanism of why we need to have this sort of P style proving mechanic for the ZK proofs and then some of the programmability that Alo has provided um the explanation of some of these right so this uh unlimited application runtime is largely due to some of maybe like this sort of scalability features that many of you might be familiar with coming from like the L2 side or um some of like the ZK ZK side is that you have this this this set of infrastructure providers okay the ZK miners or you could call them ZK provs um that can sort of like run this computation in a verifiable way obviously right if you want to get very technical or semantic about it you're just like kind of moving the trust layer to to another to to another degree and maybe maybe to compare it to like rollups specifically the optimistic kind um right you have the Trust In Math versus sort of like this game theoretic trust in that someone will be able to uh to capture some of that I think one of the the more popular failures or more popular attempts at um sort of like the game theoretic sort of uh Bounty Hunter system that uh that we've been seeing versus sort of like this mathematical guarantee through ZK is if anyone's familiar with polka dot right polka dot used to have something called fisherman um but polka dot uh deprecated that away um and so you can basically run programs um off off offchain that can be verified mathematically um through ZK obviously the caveat to that is you have to trust that the math is correct right but I I really do think maybe one of the most unfortunate mantras that we've been seeing so often at least in transparent blockchains is this this concept called like don't trust verify where the burden is on the user to be able to sort of audit their own smart contracts if they're going to be interacting with it um I mean I I consider myself a pretty technical person but I don't think I've ever like gone through and audited contracts before I use them and I I highly doubt that any of you have either in in in a serious way um and so I think that type of usability is right like the um a a way that we can kind of move forward in in sort of false move forward from false paradigms that we had crafted um so one specific example that you can maybe take away from this sort of unlimited runtime um is right if you want to run like a machine learning classifier on data perhaps uh in on on let's say the Alia blockchain or any other blockchain for example and making use of this infrastructure class uh the ZK miners or ZK provs is that you can kind of have like these classifiers running um as long as you want and all you need is a simple proof that can be verified quite easily um by uh the appropriate stakeholders and um operators on on Alo um I think I'll get to this slide in a bit but um yeah so so I to so now I I'm going to come come back to the to the beginning of how a lot of this is crafted I think a a really very um reductionist way of thinking about Alo is um it's like ethereum plus z uh zcash right you have programmability with with privacy right as we've seen in this slide right like zcash um has privacy but it doesn't necessarily have the full expressive expressivity of programmability and ethereum doesn't have privacy um right and and I think that's also probably one of the most problematic ux um um issues that we've had AKA right um I'm pretty sure most people in the world don't use ethereum or Bitcoin as it was intended at least to guard privacy where literally you're supposed to like create new addresses or accounts every time you send transactions um but everyone just has probably one wallet that they use to transact uh with everything and so right I will know your entire net worth um if you just have one account um so privacy is quite important and so what we have is and I maybe for some of you whove been following Alo for the past um three years Alo used to be um on based on something called posw proof of succinct work um it is now as of this year um transitioned to a hybrid p style um SLP style um ecosystem and so uh the the p style um part of alien is we have ZK miners right they run the proofs and they get rewarded for it um through a coinbase reward um and uh the p style is basically the consensus and the block building that are done by uh validators um and if you're familiar with aptus and Sue it's the same sort of like uh consensus mechanism bullshark and the uh and and it's Nar wall for the transactions um basically it come from the the uh the the M and Libra team that Dalia Maly had had uh set up which was largely inspired from um rapid which fun fact I had used to do research with Dalia um on on rapid um uh quite old one but and then um and then yeah Leo is the uh programming language uh for for Alo uh one thing I would like to say about um these I guess what you would call domain specific languages right with Leo is that right a lot of we've been seeing a lot of these interesting approaches to uh right these these new sort of like these new blockchains or these new languages and the biggest complaint I think is that it's it's very difficult for people to migrate to a to a new language to learn it right and so like okay how are you going to get Mass adoption and developer mind share I I I think I would say two things maybe that you could take away with it or maybe three and two and a half I guess like the half is that right programmers should have the ability to sort of like adopt new new languages and it's it's I think it's quite trivial for those of us who have the ability to um um build build build new stuff uh with it and and and part of that is that you you need to very have like this groundup approach to be able to um make use of a tech technology that not is is not necessarily easily sort of like retrofittable or I don't know if that's a word but like um back uh Backward Compatible let's say um yes you can make compilers that can like translate things but I think it's important to understand that right for something as specific as zero knowledge proofs um and you need to have like the appropriate tools to to make full use of it my now kind of suck but like I think one one thing way I try to think of it um with the necessity of dsls for ZK is that right right you can have a you want to sit down let's say right and then you can sit down on a table where you can sit down on a chair right both would sort of like fulfill the use case of being able to sit but then a chair has been literally crafted to allow you to sit I guess most optimally or most comfortably um versus sitting on a table that eventually I don't know your back will hurt Etc but um and and and and something that's quite interesting especially with regards to let's say the developer mind share that um that people have Pro um need have concerns with with uh uh this sort of like new languages and specifically with Leo that has been built from from the ground up by by the team and actually like Ian Myers had contributed significantly to it is that I think right and we saw a lot of this in the early days of ethereum um as let's say as developers or even as like ecosystem potential Partners or projects you need to be able to understand that right the demand should drive the um the desire to learn these new technologies there's like long time ago there's like some study that had said like if you can pay for example a developer um or allow a developer to run like $70,000 a year on technology that'll crawl through glass right um and so I think that's important to keep in mind right and and especially not trying to like fomo you guys but like right being early to technology and being a ma Master at that craft and the ability to kind of guide that to um other people is is is quite fortunate right we saw ethereum Dev solidity developers even though those docs were quite trash in the early days right charging like $300 an hour ex plus right um uh because there was so much demand for it and like I think like the example that I the very small example that I'd given with um the the research I'd been doing in the bioinformatics field provides a really intriguing and compelling um use case for ZK being allowed um to be used in both web two and web 3 right it's not necessarily just like a speculative use case and specifically on on that like a way you can kind of wrap your head around it is for example like I I I started like one of the first climate working groups in in crypto um and right everyone hated on bitcoin because they thought it was burning down the planet um and artists hated it right uh the fact is that the Aerospace industry emits nine times more carbon a year but carbon emissions a year but then right the difference between the value ad that Bitcoin had and let's say what Aerospace travel has is that people WR value Aerospace travel and then they didn't necessarily like destroy the Aerospace industry whereas like there are different examples of people saying Bitcoin is valuable or Bitcoin is not valuable I I would say at least right just in general not just Alia but like with ZK it's such an exciting way of um thinking about how you can provide these infrastructure provide infrastructure service providers that that will exist that can service both web two and web 3 and this sort of like engine of incentivization that is powering these which which is the example of like how bitmain was able to get created from Bitcoin and so I think that's um in incredibly exciting so right I'm going to ask you like yzk Etc right you have this immediate applicability into both web 2 and web 3 not just speculative use case um and and so yeah I this is maybe to get in more into technical weed right like validators will host applications on a registry provs will run the proofs that you want us to to mine initially what you can think of is right is in the start of the network ZK provs will mine coinbase rewards um and one specific caveat or difference between sort of like p style let's say like Bitcoin mining is there's no win or take all right you already have this sort of like you know quote unquote enshrined into the protocol like a pool right so if you can you can generate a proof in a matter of uh in in in a fixed time period then all the provs or all the ZK miners will will share prata for that um and so you can think Pro validators are are um getting a share of the coinbase reward that the ZK miners are mining um and then um producing blocks from that uh eventually what I think is going to be quite exciting for this for ZK miners improvers that are Crea from like these ZK l1's or or l2s what what we needed is that you the ZK miners would also have this sort of um opportunity as a service provider to service other um uh businesses like right uh research Labs like my own um yeah and so yeah I kind of gave this example of like game theoretic security versus mathematical security um and then yeah this is uh this is uh what you probably are familiar with in ZK you can have these uh this these proofs that are running through this language and this specific uh virtual machine that uh um the provs and validators will run um yep we'll have a program registry for for our validators um maybe something that's interesting uh about here about Alo is um uh you you have the ability to sort of have this sort of backward compliance um with some some privacy so for example right let's say like the like the South Korean exchanges um they don't like privacy coins right uh and or or even like U uh all all types of exchanges where if you want to send a transaction out of a centralized exchange account into a private address you can't do that specifically if there are custody issues ETC um and so right that gives uh a lot of problems to um uh these privacy um ecosystems that do have certain things at default right if you're familiar with like if you remember like mimble wimble sorry grin with with with mimble wimbo and then um like certain let's say like Monero um right versus like what we'd see with like zcash which is like public by default and you have to pay a bit more to be private um Alo has this concept of like sort of like a view keys where if you control this private key then you can technically sort of decrypt um transactions that you had that don't necessarily have um uh you can prove certain things about it right you didn't touch a North Korean account for example um and so right that's not obviously right that from that Spectrum it's it's it's very clear that yeah transparency by default exposes much more than you probably would be comfortable with exposing um and you can only use it in a limited way versus privacy and you have the ability to um expose certain things like let's say the US government comes knock on your door and says like prove that you haven't been interacting with North Korea and then you can you can do that so it's very very specific to how you how you want it um so I think that's something notable to have here um yeah you can have transaction execution here um so I I think um and I I went over some of the applications or or possibilities here right I I think one of the the thing and you guys can just like take a picture of of this but um private stable coins that can be compliant um with specific uh um opportunities for people to reveal things without revealing it to the entire world um right private dexes or dark pools I think if you've been familiar with like Ren and what they were trying to do um and then you also have like I guess what's really popular these days like zkl I think one thing I would like to say about zkl or like a a takeaway is that right with machine learning you need to have more data to have effective um models I think the trend nowadays is that people are wanting to withhold their data um and so it's difficult but then if you can like sort of like provide information and data um and then uh protect it or or prove certain things about it and in an encrypted way um through ZK then you'll have more data coming to that um yeah so yeah I'll just leave this up but one thing I leave is that Alo has a bunch of Grant programs obviously every project has Grant programs uh we have three different types one is H it goes from ignition launch to blueprint and then the ignition grants are around like 5K uh the launch grants uh are up to 100K and then the blueprint grants are 200 plus um and I think what's the most uh interesting or or exciting at least from my end is like the infrastructure and then I think that's a really great opportunity for you to be the um build some infrastructure tools right you want to be ether scan be the first ether scan um though it does require you to understand the the way that um these systems work um and there's bunk Bounty programs um one other thing that I I I think would be interesting is sort of like the the ability to have um some some more of this tooling be developed sort of uh more distributed globally um and so it's it's why we're here um in Southeast Asia and obviously there's been a history and track record of um a lot of fundamental infrastructure that's been developed both through like ether scan and like um stuff like coin gecko um and yeah take a picture at some of these if you go to the GitHub on the bottom that's some examples of uh programs that Howard the CTO CTO and the founder have created um you can go to an online ID like the play. leolang um and then uh you can also write I don't I haven't written here but ex explorer. al.org you kind of see like what's been going on the test Nets um and yeah last two things is validator test net is happening end of October to um gotting up to mainnet and mainnet is launched in in December um so so yeah all right thank you ladies genten let's give him a warm Round of Applause thank you Daniel for sharing a little bit of introduction about the Leo protocol uh very quickly does anyone from the audience have a question they want to ask you can just raise your hand privacy is always oh you have one question over here let me pass you a microphone just give me a second we don't have much time so I'll just probably just take one quick question all right okay so introduce quickly your name and just a short question question to Daniel thank you uh hi Daniel my name is Al our team is currently joining the Heaton and we build building on Alo one of the challenges we we face right now is that due to the nature of the architecture of the anti ZK circuit uh program uh programs right cannot share State between each other so uh will this let's say if we created something let's say an arc2 token in a program it cannot be the record probably cannot be consumed by another program to do stues so uh will there be a workaround for this or would there be any further developments that you can share with us uh on Alo I think maybe uh so there's like a there's like a project internally that Alo has been creating called zass that sort of um allows you to um be the sort of middl man or middle layer that uh both humans or even businesses and then projects want to have and how they want to interface with sort of some of the the state we also have um quite a few validators that are familiar with sort of building this infrastructure and architecture on other chains and some similar other ZK projects that have been building like scanners or indexers and and I think there there could be a way I I think something that would be interesting is maybe also take a look into like past projects that I think are interesting to like share um data between each other or like sort of delegate that I don't know how familiar you guys are with uh remember like new Cipher but like right there's like this concept called proxy re-encryption that allows you like sort of pass keys and delegate that if people want to use it right new CER Mitch he was the guy who created curve but after he left but I I think that's um um that's a pretty cool sort of concept I I think uh uh once you get familiar sort of like with the system which is quite unique or a bit special and how you might be familiar with programming on on these other um these ecosystems is is is good maybe with specific regards to like data availability that is is what people are familiar with with this sort of um interaction with l2s is that you can just encrypt the data on on the chain and you can have provs uh uh interact with it afterwards but thank you Daniel thank you very much let's give him another big round of applause thank you very much Daniel from the you can leave it on the table thank you so