Intro

Since I started university, I found that the amount of time I had to dedicate to blockchain and other areas of interest has drastically decreased.

However, I have recently been able to find a lot more time and motivation on my hands which I have directed on learning zero knowledge proofs.

I am hoping to write a small series which will explain zero knowledge proofs from (almost) nothing to modern-ish proof systems used in modern blockchain and cryptography applications today.

What is the series going to be about?

My gripe with much of modern cryptography is that I found it difficult to start researching zero knowledge proofs. I had very little rigorous knowledge of cryptography at all and foolishly believed that I could jump straight into Zero Knowledge Proofs.

Additionally, a large amount of blogs were aimed at giving a qualitative understanding of zero knowledge proofs. It is a great way to be introduced to zk proofs but if you are like me, and want to understand what’s really going underneath the hood, then I would like a bit more of a rigorous, mathematical explanation.

That being said, there are plenty of resources online which are almost certainly sufficient enough for a more determined reader to teach themselves zero knowledge proofs.

However, I hope that this series will be enough to give you a solid understanding of zero knowledge proofs, or at least to allow you to carry on your journey into this fascinating world of cryptography by yourself.

Prerequisites

As I cannot expect to teach everything from scratch, I am assuming that readers have a basic understanding of Set Theory and Group Theory. Though, I do plan to briefly cover groups and fields in the next blog.

I will touch on some other parts of cryptography such as the Discrete Logarithm Problem which is fundemental in cryptography.

I want something a bit more practical

Practice makes perfect, and you will learn a lot more when applying your knowledge.

I would suggest CryptoHack as a great website to learn cryptography and how to learn common weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

Cryptopals was created to achieve a similiar objective, but focuses a lot more on RSA, symmetric encryption and the Diffie Hellman exchange.

Extras

I am by no means an expert, zero knowledge proofs is something that is still very new to me. If anyone reading this spots any mistakes or misunderstandings, please do reach out to me on email or X so that I can fix those errors.