lurk-rs VS Nova

Lurk Lab @ Protocol Labs | Multiple Positions | REMOTE | Full-time

Lurk Lab is building Lurk (https://github.com/lurk-lang), a Turing-complete programming language for recursive zk-SNARKs. Lurk implements a minimal Lisp whose program executions can be proved in zero-knowledge, yielding succinct proofs that are concretely small and fast to verify. Lurk uses a Rust implementation (https://github.com/lurk-lang/lurk-rs) for expression evaluation, proving, and verification, with Nova (https://github.com/microsoft/Nova/) as its proving backend. Because Lurk is Turing-complete, it can be used to make and prove arbitrary computational claims (within resource limits).

We are looking for strong cryptography engineers, researchers, functional programming language specialists, applications developers, and start-up leaders/web3 entrepreneurs who want to build next-generation SNARK technology.

Ideal candidates will be knowledgeable about the state of the art in zero-knowledge proofs and (if looking for an engineering position) strong in Rust.

We are specifically hiring for:

- Rust Cryptography Engineers

Lurk Lab is building Lurk (https://github.com/lurk-lang), a Turing-complete programming language for recursive zk-SNARKs. Lurk implements a minimal Lisp whose program executions can be proved in zero-knowledge, yielding succinct proofs that are concretely small and fast to verify. Lurk uses a Rust implementation (https://github.com/lurk-lang/lurk-rs) for expression evaluation, proving, and verification, with Nova (https://github.com/microsoft/Nova/) as its proving backend. Because Lurk is Turing-complete, it can be used to make and prove arbitrary computational claims (within resource limits).

We are looking for strong cryptography engineers, researchers, documentation specialists, applications developers, and start-up leaders/web3 entrepreneurs who want to build next-generation SNARK technology. Relevant programming languages include Rust, Lisp, and (less significantly) WASM.

We are hiring for:

- Rust Cryptography Engineers, https://grnh.se/d94e94ec4us

- Software Engineers for Lurk Application Development, https://grnh.se/de7e82424us

- Documentation Engineer, https://grnh.se/10e2ca4d4us

- Start-up operator / business lead (currently unlisted, email [email protected] with CV and a brief cover letter describing your experience driving the business end of deep technical projects in the web3 space)

I recently published a fairly detailed blog post about how to formulate expressive provable programs in Lurk (https://github.com/lurk-lang/lurk-rs). Although this post goes into no details about the underlying proving mechanism, it does build to some pretty powerful ideas. If you haven't thought about the implications of being able to prove correctness of a computation without revealing some or all details of what the computation actually was, you might enjoy it. https://blog.lurk-lang.org/posts/prog-intro/

Lurk Lab @ Protocol Labs | Multiple Positions | REMOTE | Full-time contract-to-hire

Lurk Lab is building Lurk (https://github.com/lurk-lang), a Turing-complete programming language for recursive zk-SNARKs. Lurk implements a minimal Lisp whose program executions can be proved in zero-knowledge, yielding succinct proofs that are concretely small and fast to verify. Lurk uses a Rust implementation (https://github.com/lurk-lang/lurk-rs) for expression evaluation, proving, and verification, with Nova (https://github.com/microsoft/Nova/) as its proving backend. Because Lurk is Turing-complete, it can be used to make and prove arbitrary computational claims (within resource limits).

We are looking for strong cryptography engineers, researchers, documentation specialists, applications developers, and start-up leaders/web3 entrepreneurs who want to build next-generation SNARK technology. Relevant programming languages include Rust, Lisp, and (less significantly) WASM.

We are hiring for:

- Rust Cryptography Engineers, https://grnh.se/d94e94ec4us

Nova (for example) doesn't require a trusted setup. The circuit is just a schematic description of the underlying computation. In the case of the Lurk core language, this computation is 'one reduction step of a Lurk evaluation' (https://github.com/lurk-lang/lurk-rs/blob/master/spec/reduct...). Coming up with a 'fixed computation' that yields general computation is part of the design problem for Lurk (or any other Lurk-like language). Even if we did need a per-circuit trusted setup (which we don't), we could perform such a setup for our core circuit and use it to prove arbitrary programs. For example, although we have not actually performed the trusted setup, we do have an example using Groth16 (which does require a trusted setup to be secure) and aggregates the potentially many discrete reduction steps to produce a succinct proof.

Lurk Lab @ Protocol Labs | Multiple Positions | REMOTE | Full-time

Lurk Lab is building Lurk (https://github.com/lurk-lang), a Turing-complete programming language for recursive zk-SNARKs. Lurk implements a minimal Lisp whose program executions can be proved in zero-knowledge, yielding succinct proofs that are concretely small and fast to verify. Lurk uses a Rust implementation (https://github.com/lurk-lang/lurk-rs) for expression evaluation, proving, and verification, with Nova (https://github.com/microsoft/Nova/) as its proving backend. Because Lurk is Turing-complete, it can be used to make and prove arbitrary computational claims (within resource limits).

We are looking for strong cryptography engineers, researchers, functional programming language specialists, applications developers, and start-up leaders/web3 entrepreneurs who want to build next-generation SNARK technology.

Ideal candidates will be knowledgeable about the state of the art in zero-knowledge proofs and (if looking for an engineering position) strong in Rust.

We are specifically hiring for:

- Rust Cryptography Engineers

Lurk Lab is building Lurk (https://github.com/lurk-lang), a Turing-complete programming language for recursive zk-SNARKs. Lurk implements a minimal Lisp whose program executions can be proved in zero-knowledge, yielding succinct proofs that are concretely small and fast to verify. Lurk uses a Rust implementation (https://github.com/lurk-lang/lurk-rs) for expression evaluation, proving, and verification, with Nova (https://github.com/microsoft/Nova/) as its proving backend. Because Lurk is Turing-complete, it can be used to make and prove arbitrary computational claims (within resource limits).

We are looking for strong cryptography engineers, researchers, documentation specialists, applications developers, and start-up leaders/web3 entrepreneurs who want to build next-generation SNARK technology. Relevant programming languages include Rust, Lisp, and (less significantly) WASM.

We are hiring for:

- Rust Cryptography Engineers, https://grnh.se/d94e94ec4us

- Software Engineers for Lurk Application Development, https://grnh.se/de7e82424us

- Documentation Engineer, https://grnh.se/10e2ca4d4us

- Start-up operator / business lead (currently unlisted, email [email protected] with CV and a brief cover letter describing your experience driving the business end of deep technical projects in the web3 space)

Lurk Lab @ Protocol Labs | Multiple Positions | REMOTE | Full-time contract-to-hire

Lurk Lab is building Lurk (https://github.com/lurk-lang), a Turing-complete programming language for recursive zk-SNARKs. Lurk implements a minimal Lisp whose program executions can be proved in zero-knowledge, yielding succinct proofs that are concretely small and fast to verify. Lurk uses a Rust implementation (https://github.com/lurk-lang/lurk-rs) for expression evaluation, proving, and verification, with Nova (https://github.com/microsoft/Nova/) as its proving backend. Because Lurk is Turing-complete, it can be used to make and prove arbitrary computational claims (within resource limits).

We are looking for strong cryptography engineers, researchers, documentation specialists, applications developers, and start-up leaders/web3 entrepreneurs who want to build next-generation SNARK technology. Relevant programming languages include Rust, Lisp, and (less significantly) WASM.

We are hiring for:

- Rust Cryptography Engineers, https://grnh.se/d94e94ec4us

There's been a lot of VDF progress. The new design is Sloth + SNARKs (specifically Nova with GPU-accelerated MSMs). We will have an end-to-end demo of a CPU-based VDF in a few weeks, and the first VDF ASICs test samples (12nm GlobalFoundries) will be produced in December 2022.

Arkworks isn't really addressing the core of what Lurk provides. In theory, we could use Arkworks to implement a backend — but we are targeting Nova (https://github.com/microsoft/Nova), and I don't think Arkworks supports Nova currently. So the part we are building from scratch (the language itself) is at a higher level of abstraction. We like Nova's characteristics and are actively helping with aspects of its implementation so we can use it as soon as possible.

Nova. Recursive SNARKs without trusted setup.