Anna (00:00:07):
Welcome to zero knowledge. A Podcast, where we talk about the latest in zero knowledge research and the decentralized web.The show is hosted by me, Anna

Fredrik (00:00:17):
And me Fredrik

Anna (00:00:27):
Before we start in, I want to say thank you to this week sponsor Aleo. Aleo was the first platform for fully private applications. It uses blockchain and zero knowledge cryptography to deliver a web experience that is both personal and private. With Aleo developers can write private applications without background in blockchains or any expertise in cryptography. The team consists of world-class cryptographers, engineers and designers. And as a quick side note, I've also been working on a special project with Aleo that you will be hearing more about later this fall. So Aleo has released Developer Preview I, which is an early peek at what the future of the web will look like. The release introduces a new programming language called Leo, a new community driven package manager for Leo and a new development environment or IDE called Aleo studio. We recently had Howard Wu, who is a co-founder of Aleo on the show for an interview. If you haven't checked it out yet, I highly recommend giving it a listen. I'll provide a link to the podcast as well as the link to the Developer Preview I in the show notes. So you can learn more about Aleo and start contributing today. So thank you again, Aleo. And now here's Alexandra's interview with us.

Anna (00:01:44):
Today. We have something very different for you. We're going to be turning the tables. And so instead of Fredrick and I asking the questions, we actually have our friend Alexandra with us. Who's going to be asking us some questions. So, Hey Alexandra, Hey, so the questions have been collected from some like we've put a few calls out to get some outside questions. And I know Alexandra you've put some together as well, a quick intro to you. So Alexandra is an independent marketing consultant that we have both worked with in various contexts and still work with today. And I guess today, we're going hear about these questions. We actually have not heard. We have not seen all of these questions before. And so I'm very curious to see what it's like. Do you wanna maybe just let people know who you are?

Alexandra (00:02:30):
Yeah. Hi, I'm Alex. My background is mostly in marketing. Several years ago I fell down the crypto rabbit hole and ended up working at Parity eventually as their head of marketing. So recently I went freelance in order to pursue the question of how do we spread important and complicated ideas in a world where people are increasingly constructing their world view via memes and microsecond impressions. And I've got to say how excited I am to be on the show. I have a very fond memory from the time when I was interviewing at Parity and trying to quickly remedy the fact that I knew very little about blockchain tech, and I didn't want them to find that out. So my memory is of driving around San Francisco, listening to episode 15, with Robert Habermeier on consensus algorithms. Oh, my learning strategy was to just listen to it over and over and over until it made sense, which kind of worked. And I got the job. So yeah, I just wanted to say thank you to both of you for creating such a great learning resource.

Anna/ Fredrik (00:03:34):
Thank you very much. Oh, thanks Alex. That's a funny story.

Alexandra (00:03:39):
So before we begin, I know that you both have shared your bio's on the show, but maybe we can just do a quick recap. So if you could both give a quick bio plus something about your background that you have not shared on the podcast yet.

Anna (00:03:56):
Who goes first? Okay. For me, I like to start sort of the path to this podcast probably like eight, nine years ago when I first got into tech in general, but you know, I was based in Berlin and I started to hang out around the hackathons and startup worlds here locally. And actually, yeah, I think the first hackathon I went to was like a games hackathon or something like that. And so I started going regularly. And from that, I actually, you know, developed an idea around an interactive video product. I met my co-founder for that project. We ended up building a company, founding a startup and working, you know, doing kind of the full startup thing, like the pitching and the decks and the frickin, you know, I think there's like a Startup Bible or some Startup guide. We were pretty much following that model. And it was interesting and intense and I was pushing myself and it was pretty cool.

Anna (00:04:50):
But you know, after a few years of doing it, I realised that like it was pulling, it was pushing me pretty far away from like myself and I was following the model as defined by in a lot of ways, like other people. And then I would say like around 2000, end of 2016, 2017, this was when I started to become more and more interested in the blockchain kind of stuff. And I had met you to Steiner like a few years previous when I was pitching my startup. She and I had actually met and we'd stayed in touch and I knew she was in that space, but I hadn't really before then dived in. So I started to get into it around that time. And then as like 2017 started to heat up, my startup had sort of plateaued, even though we still actually had some customers, it wasn't growing in the way I'd hoped.

Anna (00:05:42):
And I saw this kind of exciting new industry where a lot of the rules that I had learned in startups could be disregarded and were being disregarded by the successful people in that space. So they were actually like breaking the rules that I had learned and it was working. And that for me was incredibly exciting and inspiring. And also just like it was relief. It was this idea like, wait, wait, maybe these models and this way that you're supposed to do things is kind of bullshit. And maybe we can actually try doing it in a very different way. And that was one of the big attractions for me in the space. It was having come from the startup, you know, guide like scenario with Y Combinator rules and all the things you're supposed to do. Right. And then seeing people just like, yeah, to be themselves in a much bigger way.

Anna (00:06:36):
And so, yeah, that was sort of the leap that I made at like later that year in 2017, I joined Parity. I worked there for nine months and total from that point onwards, a lot of people think I still work there. I don't, I haven't worked there in a long time, but I am still friends with a lot of the people at Parity. So that's why you might hear me sometimes mention that I joined in the summer of 2017. That's where I met Fredrick. And I think in the fall of 2017, that's when we actually started the podcast. And I think working in the space has been incredibly exciting because here I can, I've been able to challenge myself, but also definitely maintain like a closer proximity to my core and to what I, what I am and what I'm good at and what I like to do than I was when I was kind of trying to be a startup founder.

Anna (00:07:23):
I'm putting quote, air quotes around that. Oh yeah. And then the thing that I don't haven't talked about and people might not know, so that startup, the interactive video product continued to live on while I started, this podcast and actually this year, this like right before the pandemic hit, we were able to sell the tech stack to accompany a new startup in San Francisco called Intelling Media and the company that I sold is Videopath. And this is something I'm super excited about and have had no reason to mention it on this podcast. But it's definitely like in my life, it's been a pretty cool event and something I'm, I'm happy that like that tech product, which I was always very proud of it. And I'm super happy that it has a new home.

Fredrik (00:08:07):
Yeah. I don't know. My background is as a programmer. And I mean, I don't really like the term, but like tech entrepreneur as well, right? Like startup background, I came into it from the freelance angle. So I started freelancing in software and developments super early. I mean, I was working at not even working. I was like 13 and I was at this internet cafe helping the guy who ran it, like build computers. And then one day he was like, Oh, I need to set up a web store and need to find someone that can help me with that. I had played around with websites. I was like, yeah, I could probably help you. And then I helped him and he gave me some money for that, just as a token of gratitude. And I realized I could probably make money doing this. And so started freelancing around then at like 14.

Fredrik (00:08:59):
And I did that for a long time. And then after college, it was like, it never entered my mind that I would join a company because I'd always freelance. I'd always worked for myself. I'd always, I'd never had problems getting work that way. It was just like, okay, what do I do now? And, Oh, there's this cool guy let's work on that project together. And so I was never like founding startups and like cargo culting this, the startup thing. It was just like, here's a cool thing we can build. Let's try to make some money with that. I don´t know. That's how I got into tech and everything. And then at some point I had done this for a long time. This is kind of a thing that I haven't shared on the podcast before too. And like, why I stopped doing that cycle is I realized I was working a lot in the SAS space, right after a freelancing and then getting into web products and web 2.0 software as a service as was the thing still is the thing to a large degree on if you want to make money on an internet.

Fredrik (00:09:59):
And I realized that quality does not matter in SaaS startup world. The only thing that matters is time to production. It's how quickly can you iterate? How quickly can you get something out there? Uh, the way we would build features often was like, we have an assumption of the user wants X. We add a button that says, like do X, but we wouldn't build the feature. We just put an analytics tracker and see how many people clicked that button. And if enough people click that button, then we build a feature and like quality innovation and driving things from first principles. It's not really SAS world. And I was super intrigued by, I mean, I've talked about why I got into crypto in general before, but like one thing that I haven't talked much about is it was super intriguing because quality matters, security matters.

Fredrik (00:11:01):
It's systems programming. It's like hardcore engineering. You're dealing with networking, you're dealing with low level stuff as well as high level stuff. And just this notion that you're, you're building a protocol, you're trying to satisfy a spec and your main focus, isn't like, Oh, will this user pay more if I have this or that thing? Right. It's you know, how can I implement this spec as efficiently as possible, this protocol? And that was super intriguing to me to make that shift from a place where engineering and quality doesn't really matter at all to, it matters a lot. And like it's, it's almost everything. So that that's a large part of my shift into crypto.

Anna (00:11:47):
Can I ask what, what's another kind of random thing that nobody knows about you, that you haven't mentioned yet on the podcast?

Fredrik (00:11:55):
This is my pandemic hobby making sourdough bread. That's a, I've actually gotten decent at it. It's, it's hard to get the oven spring that I want, but it's, I'm starting to get consistent and that's good. I don't know. Otherwise it's sort of, I know stuff that people that may, that sometimes surprises people. When I tell them, it's like I did martial arts for many years. I did power lifting for many years being a computer person that doesn't necessarily look like I do those things, I guess. It's interesting. I don't know. It's not that much else. Interesting.

Anna (00:12:36):
So there's a story that I've never... I don't think we've ever really told here, but it was a very, I think the word would be fortuitous, a fortuitous event. So Fredrick and I have a shared friend Emanuel, who we both knew independently before we met each other. And we were both very good friends with this person. And so I, before meeting Fredrick had actually heard of Fredrick, this really smart guy who was one of Emanuel's friends. I remember hearing about Fred's like wedding and like all of this before meeting him. And then when we actually met, it was like, we both had started at Parity on exactly the same day, but had heard about each other. And so I remember the first message I sent over to you. Fredrick was like, Hey, uh, I think we have a friend in common. You were like, are you Anna? I'm like, yeah, it's kind of weird.

Fredrik (00:13:33):
Yeah. It's, it's a super strange coincidence. That's a, I mean, it's a friend that I've known since, since high school and grew up in the same, like little areas of Sweden. And it's very random that we'd have that friend in common.

Alexandra (00:13:47):
Cool. We should get into the AMA questions. So Pakhushkoo asks how much time per week does each of you invest into researching the topics you are presenting and he would also be interested in how, and if that has changed throughout time?

Fredrik (00:14:07):
It's definitely changed a lot. And this goes a little bit to the story of how this whole podcast started, but we, maybe we get to that at some other points for me, you know, it's a huge shift. I mean, the podcast in general from day one where Anna and I spent the same amount of time initially I did all the editing and Anna did a lot of prep work and spent about the same amount of time.

Anna (00:14:35):
Can you remember how much time that was back then? I feel like it was a lot for every episode probably.

Fredrik (00:14:40):
Yeah. So, I mean, I got better at it and it got more efficient initially. I was probably like four hours per hour of content and then got down to like three and then at my efficient, I think I'm at like two hours per hour of content. It's a lot of work to just like, listen through everything, cut out all the ums, all the pauses, all the weird stuff. And yeah, but over time, you know, my work in this as decreased drastically and that has taken over almost everything, at this point. So, uh, when it comes to me for prep today, I do almost nothing. I mean, both, both, both in terms of like reading up on what I'm supposed to be talking about. I do almost nothing. I just show up and no, this is seems interesting. And I just ask questions. I mean, I think that in part also comes from just having done a lot of it being in this space. I know most of this stuff before coming on the show, but there, it is, it does happen every once in a while that it's something I don't know anything about. And I'm just like, I have no fucking clue and I need to spend a couple hours reading up. And then it is like a couple hours probably.

Anna (00:15:49):
Like that. I saw Jenny's episode. I remember both you and I had to do quite a bit of background on that because it was a topic that was new. Yeah. So I think that, I agree with kind of the story that Fredrick told so early on, we definitely spent more time on it researching and nowadays I've actually, I mean, we also have some help. So we have Henrik who does the editing for us and Henrik, is a friend of mine who, so he composed the intro music, actually both versions, the older version and the new version. And more recently he's been taking over pretty much all of the editing. Um, so thanks a big shout out to Henrik for helping out. Also a fellow Swede. Um, but yeah, I would say like nowadays, I think I also probably do a lot less prep than I used to, although it depends on the episode and as mentioned, we do have some help, but I would say like one of the things I kind of like about the show is the name, the fact that we're called zero knowledge.

Anna (00:16:52):
I feel like we can always kind of fall back into like the whole point of this isn't for us to come deeply prepared and understanding all the nuances of project. The point of this is for us to people who kind of do know a fair bit now about this space to come and have someone explain it to us. Someone from scratch. And so actually I think, I think we've gotten that feedback once or twice where people were like, Oh, I wish you had prepared your questions better, but I'm kind of like, well, that's not what the show is about. The show is actually for people who don't know about the topic to come with us, as we explore it.

Fredrik (00:17:29):
It's always been the goal. I mean from day one, we still keep that today is the goal is to be conversational. It's not an interview show per se. It's not like grilling someone. Is not like trying to like study all of the interviews done with this person in the past and new questions. And the goal is to come and have a conversation that's hopefully enlightening to people and interesting to people. And I mean, I think for me, at least that comes from the kinds of podcasts that I like to listen to. Like one of my favourite podcasts of the past that doesn't run anymore or does, but with different hosts is the BikeShed podcast where it was just two guys who were both in the same field of programming, talking about their kind of weekly issues that they run into and with work or programming news or whatever. Right. And it's just like having a conversation on something that's interesting to them. And I like listening to that because it's interesting to them and it's a good conversation. And so I don't know, it becomes engaging and I super appreciate like a really good interview shows as well, where it is super prepared where the questions are really like insightful and trying to get at something new, but it's just a very different thing.

Alexandra (00:18:47):
And I really appreciated in a specially, you would be kind of the voice that I would, you know, if I were in that conversation, I'd be like, I don't really get it. Like, can you explain it a little bit differently or, you know, in a, in a different perspective. So that always was beneficial for me.

Fredrik (00:19:04):
Yeah. I get that feedback a lot actually. I mean, when I talk to people about the show that it wouldn't work, if it wasn't the two of us, because like, if it's just me, I think the show would have two listeners and I would be watching, I don't know. If it was just Anna, like, it's also a different vibe where I tend to do that deep dive into something and Anna tends not to. And so I think the combos, what makes it different, I guess, like, I think it was just Anna, it would have way more listeners, but

Anna (00:19:46):
Except it would probably be kind of, I don't know. I feel like there was sometimes directions that I would try to go in and you like in a good way where like, let's keep it on, you know, on message. So I actually appreciate that we have the two of us, I think it's made for a higher quality show.

Alexandra (00:20:02):
I wanted to know if you have any advice for nontechnical people in the blockchain industry, just because I feel like in this space, it's all about the technical people and like that's where the emphasis is. So yeah. We'd love your insights.

Anna (00:20:16):
I do find so in like it's a very technical space, it's a very engineer focused space. And in a way I kind of think about it, like they're the artists or the, like, if you think of like a music industry or something, also an industry I was in a long time ago, they're the talent, right?

Anna (00:20:33):
They're the creators of a lot of the stuff. And so I think the non-technical tends to be a little bit relegated and sort of, not as that, like, I don't want to say that, but it's like, it's a little bit less valued. And I think that is very frustrating to non-technical people who want to be involved. But I do think that there are, there's like these bridge roles that are still missing, which is like understanding how to work with engineers, but not necessarily being engineers yourself. And that's definitely a place that I see myself, which is like, I'm not a dev, but I've worked with devs for many, many years. I understand the languages. I do do a lot of research into like how, how basically they're expressing themselves and then work really hard to figure out ways to channel that into language that a non-technical person could understand.

Anna (00:21:25):
I mean, I don't know if that fully answers your role because it's not really like, I don't also, I don't consider myself totally non-technical. I just don't consider myself the technical person. I think there is a big need for that role. Actually, the people who can translate from the very technical to the nontechnical. And I, I do think that like more and more teams are recognizing that like a lot of teams right now are looking for technical writers or people who can pull out of their engineers, a lot of the information and make it into something that their customers or the general public could potentially understand. And so, yeah, I actually think that there's going to be more need for people like that. And so maybe that's just a way for someone who considers themselves non-technical to start thinking about it.

Alexandra (00:22:10):
Yeah, yeah. Pakeshmu also asks, Oh, what is your personal favorite episode and why? Other than this episode, of course.

Anna (00:22:21):
That's a tough one. I don't think there's like one, there's a couple.

Fredrik (00:22:26):
I definitely liked the episode with, Zooko, just because it's a great story. He's a good storyteller and introduces a lot of cool stuff as well. And hopefully a relatively understandable way. The story with Griff, same thing. It's just a great story.

Anna (00:22:43):
I remember one of my favorites was Sean Bowe the first time he came on, because I remember that was like the first time he had talked about something pretty intense that it happened when they had discovered that Z cash vulnerability and like how that affected, you know, that was in a way like a lot of his life's work for the last few years. And, and I think in that episode, I don't know if we kept that part in, but like he had sort of said at some point like, wow, this is the first time I've spoken about it and quite cathartic. And I felt that when we were interviewing him too.

Fredrik (00:23:14):
I also liked a lot of the early episodes that we're just friends. Like we added an episode with just Parity people. It was cool to hear people's backstories, but it's like probably not interesting to a wider audience. It was just interesting.

Anna (00:23:29):
I think that's like episode five, we were sitting in a house in Brandenburg around near a fire. The sound is not good, but it was a cozy interview setting. There was five of us. It was really cool.

Fredrik (00:23:41):
We also talked about like EIP is that we're going through and being implemented and hard forks coming up. And I mean, I, that's what I started the podcast for. Like originally it was talking about blockchain client development. Like that's what I wanted to learn about in there, trying to find that and not finding it and going and starting it. Right. And so I think, all of those episodes that dig into, you know, what are the engineering challenges? How are you actually building that? And, you know, that's, that's always interesting.

Anna (00:24:16):
I think more recently too. I really, I did like that episode we did on, Isogenies with Luca and I also, I mean, I we've met to me like through this podcast, we've gotten to meet and get to know some really, really interesting people like Dan Boneh. Yeah, for sure. And Ben and Ben and Tarun, we met Tarun because we did an interview with him so that like, there's a lot of people that I feel now are friends who we originally had an interview with. I can name them all.

Alexandra (00:24:48):
So, Gautam Demitcha asks, I'd love to learn how to market and grow the audience. Subscribers of your podcast can really use some advice on this for my podcast. And of course he's talking about his podcast, walkshots.fm about learning, watching.

Anna (00:25:06):
Ah, well, I don't think we have any advice for this because we don't do any of the things you're supposed to do as far as I know, like I hear there's tricks. I don't think either of us have really done very much in that department.

Fredrik (00:25:23):
Yeah. I mean, I think it's sort of also a little bit like, there's all these YouTube videos from big YouTube or something like how to become a famous YouTuber and they're almost all bullshit and it's a little bit like you got lucky and there's an element of luck, but there's also like timing and a bunch of other stuff. Right. Changing the name of the podcast, I think had a huge effect. And we were kind of lucky in that we picked a good name. We picked a name that accidentally grabbed onto a whole community that didn't really have any other contents and kind of just, okay, cool. Their hair something. But there's also, we do like some basic stuff, right. Where don't have an intro that's too long and like all these like micro optimizations. But, um, other than that, it's just like Anna, you're, the Twitter person promoting it. And like we do do Twitter. I think that's a bare minimum.

Anna (00:26:22):
Actually, more recently, I should say more recently we do have more channels. So we've started a subreddit, there's a YouTube channel, but I think what's weird is these things all kind of came organically. Like when we needed them, they got created, like we didn't start a Twitter account until like eight months in, I think.

Fredrik (00:26:40):
Yeah. And, um, the has helped too, right? Where not necessarily with like listeners, but building a community. So getting more loyal people and that will keep listening and building that community. Like whatever you can do to build that community, I think that's a startup world saying, or I like get your first a hundred or a thousand loyal customers that love you. And then you're set right where they then start promoting you and acting on your behalf. So some of that too.

Anna (00:27:12):
That's good advice.

Alexandra (00:27:13):
So, ZK Fart, amazing username. It says first off, thank you for all the effort and craftsmanship put into this podcast in community. Current circumstances have opened up more time to listen to podcasts. Are there any other podcasts that you personally enjoy and also, are there any that pair well with zero knowledge?

Anna (00:27:35):
Well, Fredrick, you mentioned one podcast that you liked, Bike Shed.

Fredrik (00:27:39):
Yeah. It stopped running, or at least in the way that I like it, the only I don't actually have, I used to listen to a lot more podcasts. Um, but there was one that I started listening to recently. That's really good. It's called Distributed with Matt Mullenweg and it's in part, it's talking about distributed companies and like that's a core part of it, but it's also giving a ton of insight into how automatic the company behind WordPress works and runs. And I don't know, and that's super interesting to me, but it's not ZK related at all. And barely tech. related, I listened to a bunch of other stuff, but also almost nothing that's tech. related or like crypto related. I don't know if people want general podcast recommendations. Go for it. There's a podcast called Extremities, which is super interesting, super well produced. I do tend to listen to the accidental tech podcast every once in a while, just because it's that same theme of just a couple of people who have interesting opinions and insights discussing mostly Apple news, but also just general development stuff.

Anna (00:28:52):
I think on my side. So I, the podcasts that I really have gotten into over the years have tended to be history related ones. So I really loved a history of Rome and revolutions podcast from Mike Dunkin. I think he's my favorite podcaster probably, and then I've also listened to hardcore history and a few months back, I don't know if anyone noticed, but I actually did an intro where I tried to sort of mimic the hardcore history, uh, like accent or intonation, but I don't know if anyone got it and they might've just thought I was being really weird. Those are really the main podcast that I listen, have listened to for a long time. I've dabbled and tried to listen to some other ones. I think when it comes to tech podcasts, I know that the one that is often paired with us or compared to us, or we've been compared to is like, Epicenter, because, and you'll see often we'll have sort of similar projects be on both. And I have at times wanting to hear their version of like, you know, them interviewing a guest that we'd had on or vice versa, just to see if they were able to glean a little bit more info. So, I think that seems to be one that pairs, well, so one podcast is pretty new, but I've enjoyed is, uh, the Uncommon Core podcast from HASU. I think that's the name of the actual podcast as well. I've enjoyed that one. So that might be something for people to check out.

Fredrik (00:30:16):
Yeah. I think the epicenter comparison was also more accurate early on where we did a lot more blockchain stuff. And then we kind of go in and out of waves of doing blockchain projects, topics, and like hardcore, just crypto or Zk topics. And I feel like they do less of that, but I agree it's probably still something that parents, well, no other stuff that I would say is worth listening to, but I do very piecemeal and just pick like episodes where it seems interesting and would pair decently with ours is like the 16 Z podcast, the Bitcoin podcast network, which is like a whole range of different podcasts. And sometimes you find interesting topics in there.

Anna (00:30:58):
Oh, Pluto egg asks. Are there projects that you wanted to be on the podcast that you didn't interview due to perceiving them to not be interesting for your listeners, but that you later wished you had interviewed?

Fredrik (00:31:10):
I certainly never thought that, but that's also like, my nature is not really that, like, I don't come from that angle. I think about what would I think is interesting. And then I go after that, I don't necessarily think like, Oh, this is not going to be interesting to this audience or that, but there's definitely people that I would still like to interview and I don't have a means of getting. Right. Right. It's more that.

Anna (00:31:37):
Yeah, I'm trying to think. I mean, we we've been pitched a lot of projects. The thing is, is like, and I do appreciate when people do pitch to us. I think it's, it's interesting to see what's out there, but we tend to actually follow like something we're curious about. So a lot of our interview guests, it happens because like we reach out to them. We've heard about them. We, you know, we want to find out more, but this is a tricky question. Like there are people who've pitched us where I don't think that they'd be interesting to our listeners and then they don't come on. I don't know that there's anyone that...

Fredrik (00:32:15):
Would you think that they're interesting? Like, would you interview them for yourself?

Anna (00:32:19):
I think sometimes I have interviewed projects that I just find interesting. Yeah. There are some people who've pitched some, there's actually some really great projects that have pitched us where they just wouldn't fit. There may be too much in the financial side of things where it's really much more like it's closer to finance and pretty far away from zero knowledge and blockchain and those projects we don't tend to have on because those ones, like, maybe that's one where I would maybe be interested, but I don't think our listeners would be interested, but it wouldn't work.

Fredrik (00:32:54):
Yeah. I hear you in that. There are, are interesting, like higher level apps that are just, it sounds like a cool app, but there's no tech here. Right. It's just like a new, like thing that someone introduced and like, it could be interesting, but it's just not what we do on the podcast. Right. I think there has been stuff like that. What, what would you, what would your tip to people who want to pitch B, what's the way to convince you to be gotten on the podcast?

Anna (00:33:28):
Got it. I don't know if I want to say this. Um, well definitely, one thing I definitely prefer is when projects pitch with a topic that isn't just how great their project is. Cause I don't really find that, that interesting. I don't know. And like, I think if there's like a like a theme or a topic where somebody really feels like this is their focus and they think it's relevant to zero knowledge research space or deep blockchain space, that's where they might pitch that. And then I might be actually into it, even if I haven't heard of them. But I would say, like I said, a lot of the projects that come on they're projects that we seek out. So we have heard about them somehow. We've kind of been, you know, made aware of them or we've like discovered them ourselves. And we're like, Oh, this is kind of neat. Let's let's dig into it. Um, but yeah, I think that when people are cold pitching, that would be a, maybe a good way to at least start a conversation is like, this is a topic of interest and this is what we're really into, but it can't just be like, we're really into being more efficient efficiency or like, it can't just be like the one unique selling point of your project. And that's your good thing or that's your topic. It should be a bit more nuanced.

Fredrik (00:34:47):
It shouldn't be the elevator pitch of the company or the project. I feel like that's, yeah, it's uninteresting to me as well.

Alexandra (00:34:56):
Will from Parity asks, why start a podcast of all things?

Fredrik (00:35:01):
When I joined Parity. I, so, uh, I think a way that I learn is listening to a podcast about that thing, right? So I joined Parity. I wanted to learn about how do people do blockchain client development. And I started looking around for podcasts that cover this and I couldn't find any. And I asked around and a company chat and no one else knew about anything either. And so I said, okay, let's start one then. And we started talking around with this idea and chat, and I know Jef who was on the podcast and a couple of episodes in the beginning jumped in and I jumped into the conversation. And then I was like, okay, cool. Well, we can make this happen. And I went and talked to Parity's, then comms department. And I talked to Ashley and said, here's my idea. I want to do a podcast about this. Can we do this in Parity? She was like, no, I don't think it really belongs in Parity. And, uh, it's probably not a good idea. And then I was like, well, I don't know who you are. Like, I just started that company. I'm just going to do it on my own then. Um, and I started talking to Anna and Jef and we pulled it together and started doing a test recording and uh, in the cafe next to the office.

Anna (00:36:11):
Didn't turn out that good. But I don't think we use, I think that was one that we didn't use.

Fredrik (00:36:16):
Yeah. We didn't, but it was also like intentionally, like, let's just figure out how to speak to each other. And then we, I think we're even starting with the second episode. I think that, that we used.

Anna (00:36:30):
That's, what's weird about the show. If you go back to the first episode of this show, it's rust Fest, 2017 or something super random, it's not an introduction episode at all. And that was, I guess, version two of our attempt.

Alexandra (00:36:46):
So this leads to a question from anonymous, which I'm very personally interested in, why don't, why doesn't Fredrick or Anna show more?

Anna (00:37:00):
I've been getting this criticism a lot. I think it's a nice criticism to get. Why don't you show more?

Fredrik (00:37:06):
And for me, it's two factors. One is that I'm just not a very shilly person, right? It's sort of, I like to talk about the merits of the projects that I'm working on and I'm happy to do that at any point, but it's, I don't know, shilling me is also like a superficial empty thing. Like that's part of the concept of shilling. If shilling just means like saying positive things about stuff you work on, then I wouldn't be opposed to doing that. But then that leads to the second thing, which is, this is not a Parity podcast and it's not why I'm here. It's not, I'm not here to pitch what I'm working on or say why, what I'm doing is better than what everyone else is doing. Even if I might believe that it's not my role here to say that. And I think it's important just from a moral standpoint to separate those two things. Like why are you doing things and like being rigorous in how you split those things up?

Anna (00:38:05):
I think in my case, I think shilling is kind of tacky. I think it feels gross to do it, but I do. I actually do do it a little bit. Like, you know, a lot of the work that I've been doing, does revolve around the zero knowledge research community, you know, that we first tapped into because of the podcast. And a lot of the things I work on have Zk at the beginning of them. It's in my Twitter bio, if you want to check it out. But in general, I mean, I have gotten the feedback, like for example, earlier this, there was these episodes where there was no sponsor on it, which is actually fine in my opinion. But I did have someone say like, why weren't you just talking about the projects that you're doing? You should have been talking about the validator.

Anna (00:38:47):
Like you should have pitched it at every moment. And I, and I was like, yeah, but like, I don't know, then maybe there's too much of, it's too combined. Like I actually, I like that. I wear these various hats at times. And I also like that on the podcast. Like I get to just be like curious person and not co founder of this, or, you know, doing running, this thing. Like, I don't know. I do think that there's a little bit more mixture for me, but I do also just find it weird to constantly talk about like all the shit you're proud of. Although I did earlier in this episode brag about m my exit, but whatever.

Alexandra (00:39:25):
So another question, why pick this as a niche to make a podcast about Zero Knowledge?

Anna (00:39:32):
The reason we named it, the podcast zero knowledge as a joke.

Anna (00:39:38):
I think it was Jef who had came up with, it basically said like, you don't be a good name, zero knowledge. And we all burst out laughing. We're like, ha ha. Cause we have zero knowledge. Then it stuck. And I think it was, I think Kobi Gurkin actually tweeted something about this. I can't remember how he's described it, but it was like, it was one of the, what is it Retcon, is that when you, the retelling of old stories. So he was like, this is one of the most Epic Retcons. Like we named ourselves by accident and then became the zero knowledge podcast for real.

Fredrik (00:40:13):
Yeah. It's a good niche though. It's a, it's an underserved niche, which I think is also contributing to like out question, like how do you make it popular, pick something that's underserved. But, um, it's also an amazing community. It's like the zero knowledge community is really cool because it's people who are super passionate, ideological, academic, like researchy and engineering, and like finding this intersection of people who like research and academics, like engineering have some ideological leaning and like support web three. And the things that I think are important as well. Like I don't think there's any other community that actually intersects these things as much as the Zero Knowledge community.

Alexandra (00:41:00):
Another question, how can I introduce this podcast to noobs?

Anna (00:41:06):
I tend to point people at episode 21, the introduction to Zero Knowledge proofs that Fredrick and I did, I don't think it's necessarily our best episode ever, but it does introduce why, like what the name of the podcast stands for. And we do very basic introductory examples. Like we go into basic, basic introductory examples, like the where's Waldo case. And the Soduku like, we really try to like, I I've, I've sent this to family members and they've been able to like understand what zero knowledge is roughly, and then they understand why our podcast is named that. So, I mean, that's where I usually send people. I never recommend that people start at the beginning for a Rust fest 2017 or that they start on the latest episode because like we've been learning a lot over the years. So we may sound like more advanced now.

Fredrik (00:42:00):
And it's also like the latest episode is also not like if that's a good entry point or not depends very much on what that episode is at that specific time. Like it could be a completely random jump into the deep end of the pool of like some, here's a presentation on halo 2 and what crypto primitives it has, like that's makes no sense to introduce with, or it might be a completely random blockchain project where it doesn't tie into the name at all, because we do go like in and out of different tangents. Right. So I think it's good to pick some starting point that's sort of his own theme and makes sense. But I actually, I've never even tried introducing this to anyone. So I don't know where I would send them.

Anna (00:42:45):
One last question, from the AMA, how do we fix the internet?

Fredrik (00:42:50):
We, make things verifiable. I think that's the core of it, right? And it's even if you have to trust someone, you should be able to verify. And in the internet today, we have no habilities to verify anything at all. And, um, you think you might have, like if you were being served in HTTPS websites, you think that you might be able to verify that the publisher of that content is the person who bought the certificate, but that's not actually true. It has happened many times where this isn't true and a district certificate authority fucked up. And so I think the core of web3 and how we fix the internet is introducing verifiability. And there are many means of doing that and we're working on various ways of achieving that. But I think that's the, to me, that's the core of it.

Alexandra (00:43:44):
You spoke about how some of your favorite episodes have been about people telling stories. So are there any stories that are really exciting that you want to tell here?

Fredrik (00:43:55):
From our own lives or like from podcast history or...

Anna (00:44:00):
I think like your experience in the space, I think would be really interesting.

Fredrik (00:44:04):
I mean, it's a really crazy space for sure. I mean this space, I'm not talking about the blockchain space and not the zero knowledge space. The zero knowledge space has interesting stories too, but I think the major one is, the Z cash exploits, which is like a big story. Otherwise it's still like, so cutting edge. So academic. So like I know non story friendly drama. Yeah, exactly.

Anna (00:44:32):
A little drama, but It's pretty tame.

Fredrik (00:44:33):
No, but in the blockchain space, there's a lot of drama, but a lot of fucking craziness it's, I don't know if there's any specific story that comes to mind. But think for me, like a big story of my past three years is obviously Parity's interaction with the Ethereum community and how we've gone in and out of favor for, I mean, not completely recognized, like we fucked up with the hack and all this stuff and went out of favor with that. But then, I mean, a thing that I've learned is like communicating intention is incredibly hard to do, especially when there are malicious actors in the space. Right? So when our intention has been to try to fix things and try to go, okay, let's figure this out together and make things better. It's come across as we're trying to destroy Ethereum. And it's just, Holy shit. How did that, how, how did that twist happen? And like, for me, that's the most dramatic things that have happened over the past couple of years have been these really wild things where we think one thing and then we send something out there and like the world interprets it 180 degrees from the way we intended it.

Anna (00:45:56):
Yeah. So I've been outside. I have lived outside of, I mean, I'm friends with a lot of people at Parity, but I'm also friends with a lot of people in the Ethereum community. And I've seen some of these go down. Like, I think you nailed it where that is definitely a point of tension and drama and has been for a long time. And I hope that in a way, like with the disconnection, with the open Ethereum and now like Parity focusing on Polkadot, that maybe that tension can just be put to rest. They're just different. They're in different spaces now. And maybe there's bridges that can be built in the future. I've always really wanted like, friends from these two camps to talk to each other, get along and, and hopefully maybe with some time that can happen. My feeling on this, the sort of the time that I've spent in this space.

Anna (00:46:43):
And also the time that I've spent while kind of being the host of this podcast. I mean the most dramatic, exciting times in my opinion were at the beginning in 2017, just what I find cool is like, I'm happy that I got a chance to like go through that and I didn't gain anything and I didn't lose anything from the, the like hype of 2017 and the crash. Do you know what I mean? Like, nothing life-changing happened to me at all, but I got to go along with it and I got to see it. I got to see friends lives change. I got to see, you know, in the good and bad ways. And I, and it was really exciting. And then 2018 was sort of like a little bit of a slow descent back to reality. 2019 felt like this is an industry that we're working in and it wasn't particularly over-hyped at all.

Anna (00:47:34):
Um, and now we're seeing kind of like something's brewing again and I'm happy that I've gone through the first. I'm glad that 2017 that I got to see that. And I am very curious to see how the next few months pan out or year. I don't know. I don't want to make any predictions here, but it definitely like the one thing about it is there does tend to be consistently something going on that keeps us interested. The one thing I do worry though, is like, okay. So in our new year's episode, I made two claims that I've since been called out for. One that DeFi is stupid and two that like memes are dumb, like both fails. I'm sorry. I think I've already mentioned this once on the podcast. I was wrong. I got it wrong. I got it wrong, that it was like, not going anywhere. Oh, you're right. Maybe dumb is fair, but um...

Fredrik (00:48:29):
I mean, we're not going anywhere. We don't know that yet. Right. Where's it going? It's not gone anywhere so far.

Anna (00:48:37):
I guess what I like people are paying attention to it, I guess that that is happening. Yeah. But I do get this feeling like, as we've been kind of like going along and doing the zero knowledge research, deep dives, and like learning about the math and the engineering, I feel like in a way we've become the like healthy snack. And there's a lot of other things going on that feel like they're really exciting and shiny, but they're fast food and they're gonna make you feel sick at the end. And you know that, but you can't look away and you can't stop trying it because you're like, Oh, well I wanna, I wanna taste that too. But I do feel like what we do, I get the sense more and more that like, what we're doing is at least trying to be pretty feet on the ground and genuinely be curious and not be swept away. But that does mean that we'll, you know, I might come off as like a grumpy old lady once in a while and be like, no memes!

Fredrik (00:49:34):
Any of it for me. I think the podcast has the opposite effect where I think I would be in a very small engineering bubble that just looks at like a pretty narrow scope of like layer one blockchain building. And the podcast pulls me out of that a little bit. And I go out, it was a bubble a little bit and I go more into fast food

Anna (00:50:04):
For me. It's my, you know, vegetable diet, that's funny.

Fredrik (00:50:11):
Cause like, I think my bubble would be extremely small otherwise, and this expands it a little bit. Um, but not so far as to think that, DeFi has done anything productive for the world yet.

Alexandra (00:50:24):
Do you think it's such an interesting industry because you all this idealism, and genuinely building something for a better society, and then you have a lot of people who have invested a bunch of money and, and want, you know, a certain thing to be the winner and it's such a conflict of interest, with that. So...

Fredrik (00:50:44):
Yeah, it is crazy. I mean, it's with Polkadot launch. It's also so interesting to see how many speculators suddenly appeared. Like the community was relatively small, relatively quiet and very focused on what are they building and when is this feature coming out and, you know, when can I get this RPC end point from the clients and like very grounded feedback. And then it was like launch and suddenly have completely random out of the blue questions, opinions, people who are saying, this is the greatest project in the world ever. And like, you've never heard of them before. You never, they've never been part of the community. And they're saying it's the best thing that could possibly exist. It's like, okay, cool. Thank you. But I don't know how you came to that conclusion. I don't think you know anything about the project, but it's fun.

Alexandra (00:51:37):
So pick it up, just launched. What are you looking forward to seeing happen on postdoc?

Fredrik (00:51:44):
It being used. That's the main thing now. Uh, I think, uh, we, as a company are switching around from trying to deliver on a white paper to thinking more broadly, what is it that people need? What can we do to help build a healthy ecosystem? What even is a healthy ecosystem, right? The parity is had this kind of thing. It's not as widespread within Parity that I would like it to be, but it's certainly at like sea level. It's definitely a thing that we say quite a lot is the things that we build should exist beyond the company. Like if the company ceases to exist tomorrow, everything that we've started, like the momentum that we started to build up the movement that we've started building up should persist beyond us and continue to exist. Um, and while I recognize the parodies role in Polkadot right now is maybe still something right where we still maintain one of the main client's implementations.

Fredrik (00:52:56):
I think if Parity ceased to exist today, Polkadot with still continue. But what is like parodies role going into the future then while it's to make sure that it's really easy to build on it, that the tooling is there for, for builders who want to build dApps and yeah, just make sure that we get to a point where this thing can live on its own and just continue to, to thrive and like actually have meaningful applications built on it. And that's, I think is a huge question that no one in blockchain has solved yet. Right. How do you build an actually meaningful application? Well, some there a, there exists some right currency is a meaningful application, but yeah. How can we continue pushing towards web3, I think is the general theme and, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm excited to see where we can go with Dan and then see how far we can push things.

Alexandra (00:53:53):
Question for both of you. Is there any project that you'd like to see that you haven't seen yet?

Anna (00:53:59):
I would love to see more projects like the Zk game, like things that use zero knowledge proofs in these really accessible, interesting ways. And it might be a way like maybe there's still a ways off before that can happen because it's very new and the tools aren't there and the ideas are still being developed. But like that kind of thing is what I would like to see more of, which is something that I can communicate to other people. And they could actually participate in that. Use your knowledge proofs in their core, not just kind of added on to something that already exists. That's what I would like to see more of.

Fredrik (00:54:41):
Yeah. I agree on that. Like getting more quote, unquote end user applications that are just cool and fun. Like they don't have to be making people money or like significantly changing the world or changing people's lives. That can just be fun. And that's cool. So definitely like to see more of that too. And then there's like a bunch of projects that,, are a bunch of things that have been tackled in some way, but I don't think there's enough players trying to solve the problem. So we run a centralization risk. I think there's not enough players trying to solve file storage, like incentivized file storage. I don't think there's enough people trying to solve DNS as a problem. I mean, there there's like handshake and there's ENS and there's a various approaches, but I just don't think that there are enough of them. And I don't think any of them go far enough to actually solve the whole problem. I don't think decentralized computes, anyone actually has like a viable solution to that. Messaging like status is trying to do, like completely private Meta data leakage free messaging. Is a huge topic that I would love to see a thousand companies working on, but, there's like one or two, I think there's, there is an almost infinite amount of stuff in this space to do. And I would like to see being done.

Alexandra (00:56:11):
Where do you see the ZK industry going as a whole?

Fredrik (00:56:14):
In the past couple of years. There's definitely some trends that you can pick up on, right? One is going towards not having a trusted set up, even though that's still the most efficient snark and the end for, for verification, there's more and more research being done on non trusted set up systems. And then obviously there's tons of innovation on like the crypto layer, but another trend is also like standardization starting to standardize. How do we express circuits? How do we in drop rate between different proving systems? How can I send one circuit over to another probing system and have that actually be able to generate a proof release? Usually the, the circuit, the way you express the circuit is specific to the proving system or that specific library for that proving system. And so nothing is undroppable or like composable, I guess, is the more correct term. And then, another trend is tooling, right? Is sort of making things more accessible. We can't just rely on the paper being published and then calling it a day, building really good libraries, building really good languages, IDs like tooling throughout the whole stack to enable developers to actually build stuff. So I think that's where the industry is going as to being without, you know, trusted setups, standardizing and building more tooling for accessibility.

Anna (00:57:44):
And I think on the use case, I think we are also seeing trends where projects that originally came out, you know, using zero knowledge proofs, maybe for privacy, but now finding their space, like finding that actually where they're going to be used more as in the scaling idea or compression idea that emerged in the last year. And then you like you do, what I sort of see now is like a lot of the Zk projects will kind of like be falling into one of these various camps as to what their main focus is. You also see some that are very much focused on existing blockchains, primarily, Ethereum as like the Zk roll up or the Lydian type models. But then you also see some projects where they're like, we don't care about blockchains at all. And we are going to service existing companies with this sort of novels, your Knology thing. And they might actually have a blockchain underneath it, but like, they're going more towards the enterprise.

Alexandra (00:58:41):
And what would you work on if you had unlimited time and funding?

Fredrik (00:58:45):
The best bakery in the world.

Anna (00:58:48):
That's like, you wouldn't be doing sourdough all day long.

Fredrik (00:58:51):
Or maybe farming.

Fredrik (00:58:54):
I think there, there are many industries that require a fuck ton of starting capital that I want to do, but I've never been able to do because tech is the only industry where you don't need starting capital.

Anna (00:59:07):
Yeah. I don't know what else I would do.

Fredrik (00:59:10):
Fix global warming and world hunger, clean water for the whole world. I mean, if you have unlimited time and money, there's a lot you can do.

Anna (00:59:17):
That would be a good thing. Totally.

Alexandra (00:59:22):
I wanted shed a little bit of light on to Fredrick's role as a CTO of Parity. I'd think you don't see it a lot on this podcast. So I wanted to tell the story about one of my favorite memories of working with Fredrick. So this is one time and I'm freaking out about a deadline and talking to Fredrick and he's like, eh, let's just do whatever we can in a reasonable manner. Uh that's that's all we can do. And he said it in this way, where I really tapped into the truth of that. And it was just like, Oh yeah, you're right. And I stopped freaking out, went back to back to work, which is exactly like what you want to do in that situation. Right. And only later did I realize like, wow, that's like a really judo move you're there. So I tell this story as a way to convey the sort of fierce chill and reasonableness that Fredrick brings. Um, so that's my long segue into my question for Fredrick. Uh, what is your management philosophy and how has it evolved over the years?

Fredrik (01:00:22):
Yeah, I don't know. Management philosophy is a big, big word. I am not sure. I have one really. I mean, as I said, in my intro, like I've worked in startups, I've managed people before. I've been CTO before and I've had worn a bunch of different hats and other roles, but I've always been a programmer at hearts. And I joined Parity as a programmer, where I worked only as a programmer for a long time in Parity and eventually grew into being CTO. And even in the beginning of being a CTO would be coding along. And over the past two years, it has gone from some programming to no programming. I do struggle to even call myself a developer. I don't think I am a developer anymore today. I am a manager and it's definitely been a learning curve for me as well. And my management philosophy has been to spend a lot of time with the people, right. I don't want to get disconnected from the people doing the work because ultimately the organization is just a collective of those people. So if you understand those people, you know, you understand the organization and it's needs.

Alexandra (01:01:35):
Question for Anna. What have you learned through being a validator? Yes.

Anna (01:01:41):
A ZK validator. Let's talk about that project. Okay. I think the validator project I've mentioned this before, but like, it started very much as a test. We wanted to see if it would make sense. Like now the Zk validators project that I do separately from the podcast, but it's also related to zero knowledge proof research and working with the networks where we act as a validator and the proof of stake sense, actually like working with those networks to champions or not proof and privacy tech, as well as connect with the teams that are potentially building that kind of stuff in or around those networks. So I think the thing that I've actually learned about the most was just like how rich these networks are. I think, before this point I was very much still kind of only seen a lot of like the Ethereum and the Ethereum ecosystem projects. But I think by being a validator on other networks, you just get closer to like, all these other projects that are working in those networks. And you may not have heard so much about them, but in the networks themselves, they're actually kind of, you know, a big deal are doing some pretty cool stuff. So yeah, I think it's a, for me, it's a great project to learn more and to like see more of what's going on in a wider space. Although I must say like the space that I still don't know and don't know if I'll ever know, it's like all the Bitcoin stuff and everything that happened before. It's like I started 2017 and just went forward and I have not ever been pulled into anything older. And I don't know if it's like, maybe it's where I live. The fact that I'm in Berlin, maybe it's, you know, how I entered the space in general, but yeah, I have not had much intro into that part.

Fredrik (01:03:24):
You should get, get someone to talk about the current state of Bitcoin, what's going on in the ecosystem. Cause I don't really, I mean, you hear about random stuff. Oh, there's lightning network, but that was like three years ago. What, what's actually new in Bitcoin? I don't know either.

Alexandra (01:03:39):
We were approaching the next online Zk summit. Oh, what's your favorite aspect of Zk summit?

Anna (01:03:45):
Well, I think the summits are amazing. I also happen to organize them. I have ton of fun. I get to see all my friends. I get to learn new things. I mean, I don't know what's the favorite. I mean, in person, we did four zero knowledge summits before we went online. We went online in March and we didn't, I mean, we was out of necessity, but, I think the summit is just a great gathering moment for people that are working on this stuff. And I think it's, I think it's a lot of fun. The next online Zk summit is not yet confirmed for when it's going to happen, but very likely it's going to happen this fall probably later in the year and I will be sharing some details about that as it comes.

Fredrik (01:04:33):
Like I mentioned earlier, like the Zk summit was the spawn of like the community around that, the podcast. And I think that's the best thing about it too, is like, it is an opportunity for the community to come together. It is harder when it's not in person, then it's an extension of the telegram group, but it's still, it's a cool event. It's so there's always something new that shows up and like new ways of talking about things. So it's somewhere like in feeling between an academic and an industry conference, which is interesting.

Anna (01:05:04):
I know that there are people who save up a little bit for the Zk summit in terms of like, you know, coming out with some new project or something like that. And that's cool. Yeah. I hope that the online version can kind of maintain some of the momentum we can get back to, the real, the in-person version. I mean, it would be amazing if next like March or something, we could do another in person, but I don't think it makes any sense for the fall. Like I have zero hope for the fall.

Fredrik (01:05:29):
No, everything will remain canceled.

Alexandra (01:05:33):
Cool. I think that about wraps up all of our questions.

Anna (01:05:37):
Well, thank you, Alexandra for coming on and asking us all these questions.

Fredrik (01:05:41):
Yeah. Thank you. It's an interesting angle, right? It's a very different format. I wonder what people think of it and if they want more of this, I don't know. I mean, it's a format that's interesting to some.

Alexandra (01:05:55):
Well, thanks for having me. It's been fun. So thanks so much and to your listeners. Thanks for listening.

Fredrik (01:06:01):
Thanks for listening.

Anna (01:06:02):
Thanks for listening.