Lasso, Jolt, and the Lookup Singularity, Part II

In this second talk about Lasso and Jolt, Justin Thaler (a16z crypto) dives deeper into the technical details of this new SNARK design approach. Justin also discusses the “lookup singularity,” how Lasso and Jolt should cause us to reevaluate what we think we know about SNARK design, SNARKs for data parallel computation, and the design of zkVMs, before getting into the technical details. To recap, SNARKs are a core primitive that permits applications to build on and update so-called layer-1 blockchains like Ethereum. Lasso that has a much faster prover than prior lookup arguments, a central primitive in modern SNARK design, while Jolt instantiates this approach for the RISC-V instruction set.

This is joint work with Arasu Arun, Srinath Setty, Riad Wahby, Sam Ragsdale, and Michael Zhu.

About the speaker

Justin is Research Partner at a16z crypto and an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Georgetown University. His research interests include verifiable computing, complexity theory, and algorithms for massive data sets. In 2011, he produced the first implementation of a general-purpose interactive proof system. He is the author of a comprehensive survey on SNARKs, “Proofs, Arguments, and Zero-Knowledge,” and a co-creator of Apache DataSketches, an open-source library of production-quality streaming algorithms.Before joining a16z crypto and Georgetown, Justin was a Research Scientist at Yahoo Labs. Before that he completed her PhD in Computer Science at Harvard University.

About a16z crypto research

a16z crypto research is a multidisciplinary lab that works closely with our portfolio companies and others toward solving the important problems in the space, and toward advancing the science and technology of the next generation of the internet. More about us: a16z.com/2022/04/21/announcing-a16z-crypto-research