Manta Network in Amsterdam

Manta Network attended ETHAmsterdam, DevConnect, and AmsterDOT last week and we wanted to share the highlights.

Last week, the Manta Network team united in Amsterdam to learn, connect, share and build community. We hosted our first ever canal boat ride which was a great way to connect and we wanted to share and recap some of the talks, workshops, and panel discussions we organized and attended.

ETHAmsterdam provided an abundance of hacking resources and re-united some of the top minds, professionals and experts in the Ethereum ecosystem. DevConnect had a heavy focus on Ethereum events, each with a unique focus on depth-first sessions, such as the ZKSummit 7 and Applied ZK Workshop. Lastly, AmsterDOT was a four-day conference and hacking session organized by some of the leading projects of the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems.

DevConnect was a week-long event full of amazing activities and intimate events. The events were tailored for those looking to deepen their understanding of the ecosystem and progress important conversations relating to the future of Ethereum and they featured domain experts. There was also a co-working space available for all hackers who joined the ETHAmsterdam a week prior to the ETHAmsterdam Hackathon. The most interesting and important section of DevConnect for Manta team was the ZKSummit 7 and the Applied ZK Workshops.

The Zero-Knowledge Summit

The Zero-Knowledge Summit ZK7, brought together the most innovative thinkers and builders in the space to learn about the latest in zero-knowledge research, SNARKs, STARKs, cryptographic primitives and privacy. The event was an intersection between zero-knowledge tech talks, workshops, and the ecosystems breakout rooms where you could move from one booth to another to meet the people from these projects and do networking.

There was also the announcement of the ZPrize, which brings together 21 of the leading blockchain and Web3 technology companies, foundations and funds to promote the advancement of zero-knowledge technology. The competition will have teams compete for awards by engineering new algorithms and techniques that achieve performance metrics unmatched by the best zero-knowledge systems deployed in the blockchain industry today. There are over 7 million dollars in prizes. Find out more about the challenge and prizes here.

Manta Talks, Workshops and Presentations

ZKP Challenge

Core-contributor at Manta, Todd Norton, gave an introduction about the Zero-Knowledge Proof Challenge, this is a great introduction to zero-knowledge technology with a specific use case which Todd walked through in an introductory tutorial. More information on the challenge can be found here.

DevConnect Applied ZK Workshop
The Applied ZK Workshop brought together teams from around the ZK ecosystem to learn about the latest developments in the zero-knowledge application landscape. We also set up a booth in the open space together with the other leading zero-knowledge projects. We met and networked with a lot of ecosystem like-minded people, and gave some awesome swag to our visitors. We have a ton of Manta swag available if you come and find us at any of our events!

AmsterDOT

Shumo (@shumochu), cofounder and core contributor to Manta gave a presentation on ‘Composable Privacy on Polkadot’, highlighting some of the core capabilities of Manta and the Polkadot ecosystem.

What’s Next for Web3 Infrastructure Panel Discussion

Kenny Li joined Astar Network, IoTex and HOPR on a panel discussing privacy and security and what the future looks like. Check out a short clip here or view the entire live stream here.

Takeaways from the Conference

• There are lots of privacy teams doing unique projects, but there’s enough overlap that we can collaborate to build something greater than each one of us (see ZPRIZE, WASM challenge, etc.).
• It was a good builder conference, and there were lots of talented people who were serious about solving problems.
• The future of privacy requires ZKP, MPC, and FHE, but there’s a lot we can do now with just ZKP while the rest of the technology isn’t ready for production.

Join Us!

The Manta Network team is growing too. Please reach out to us if you’re interested in joining our awesome team. While Amsterdam is behind us we’re looking forward to attending a lot more events this year, so follow us on our social channels to find out where we will be next!