requests-for-proposals VS Nova

After The Merge, getting more scale into the system is probably the most pressing issue so much of our resources have been focused on 4844 and extensions of 4844 to "full sharding". Extensions of 4844 require a better `is_data_available()` function that instead of downloading everything performs Data Availability Sampling which is a hard problem to do in a decentralized/distributed yet reliable way. We just put out an [RFP](https://github.com/ethereum/requests-for-proposals/blob/master/open-rfps/das.md) to get more teams in this and are excited by the number of submissions. Reach out if this is the first time you've seen it and are interested in performing some work/research in this domain!

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.