PrivacyIN Privacy Academy ZK Training Camp Helps Expand the ZK Track Landscape Continuously

Author: PrivacyIN

As a highly anticipated potential track in the encryption industry, ZK (Zero-Knowledge Proofs) can ensure both the privacy and validity of knowledge. This makes ZK widely applicable in areas such as "privacy" and "scalability," which are currently two major pain points and challenges in the crypto world that need to be addressed.

Since the beginning of this year, whether it is Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin publicly stating that "ZK will become a major technological revolution in the future," or the continuously rising market enthusiasm and community discussions, the ZK narrative has been highly anticipated in 2022.

As we continue to explore the broader application scenarios and possibilities of ZK technology, the first ZK training camp course initiated by the LatticeX Foundation's PrivacyIN Privacy Academy has successfully concluded.

This training camp started on July 9, 2022, gathering three senior academic scholars in cryptography from global universities as instructors. Once launched, it attracted enthusiastic registrations from core developers of global internet giants and university students, sparking a wave of interest in cryptography learning across multiple regions worldwide.

First ZK Training Camp Successfully Concludes

During the four-week course, the small, specialized, and comprehensive course design balanced theoretical knowledge of cryptography with practical exploration of specific application scenarios. The collision of ideas between instructors and students led to multiple excellent graduation project cases, providing important development directions for the future application of ZK technology.

Theory + Practice: Prestigious Instructors Ignite the Spark of ZK

On one hand, the small, specialized, and comprehensive course features of the PrivacyIN Privacy Academy's first ZK training camp are fully reflected in the instructor lineup: experts in cryptography, specialized in ZK technology, providing comprehensive explanations and presentations on principles, applications, and comparisons of advantages and disadvantages.

The first week's course focused on the theme of "Basic Cryptographic Foundations, Research Progress, and Industry Application Cases of ZK Protocols," while the second week's course centered on "Design Concepts and Comparisons of Important ZK Protocols." Both weeks were taught by Assistant Professor Zhang Yupeng from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University. As a top academic leader who has published multiple academic papers and possesses rich practical experience in cryptography, Professor Zhang integrated his research experience into the course, leading students to understand the basic principles of protocol implementation in an accessible manner.

The third week's course focused on "Circuit Design Techniques and Optimization Ideas for zkEVM," taught by Dr. Han Siyuan from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Dr. Han's research focuses on blockchain storage optimization and ZK-based blockchain/data privacy protection systems. His extensive literature and practical case studies encountered during academic research vividly combined technical principles with real-world examples, making Dr. Han's course particularly engaging.

The final week's course revolved around "Privacy Protection Design for Machine Learning Based on ZK Protocols," delivered by an industry senior engineer who provided exciting explanations based on engineering practice experience, offering students a practical learning experience grounded in theoretical knowledge.

Additionally, the ZK training camp specially invited Assistant Professor Kelvin Wong from the Department of Computer Science at Northwestern University to conduct an exciting special lecture. Kelvin Wong is a senior privacy computing engineer, primarily involved in implementing the Rosetta privacy machine learning platform and MPC algorithm protocols, with years of practical project development experience. In the course, Kelvin Wong demonstrated to students how to use Snarkjs+Circom to build a simple ZKP neural network prediction application, helping students fully and genuinely experience the charm of cryptography and ZK in practice.

Learning + Practice: Elite Students Form a Reserve Force for ZK Development

On the other hand, the limited 20 student slots and high expectations for students' learning attitudes and outputs are also a deep implementation of the small, specialized, and comprehensive course feature philosophy of this ZK training camp.

During the registration phase, PrivacyIN received enthusiastic applications from applicants around the world, including outstanding developers from top global internet giants such as Google, TikTok, and Twitter, as well as students from Stanford University, the University of Tokyo, and Tsinghua University.

Promoting innovation and implementation of privacy in next-generation multi-party computing scenarios is an important goal of PrivacyIN's series of courses at the Privacy Academy. To ensure that students can genuinely learn, understand, and apply their knowledge, PrivacyIN has set clear requirements for participating students: first, students must have a basic understanding of cryptographic protocols; second, students must commit at least 10 hours per week to the course; and finally, students should maintain a proper learning attitude, preparing before classes and completing learning tasks after classes, and submitting high-quality graduation projects after the course concludes.

After a rigorous selection process, a final list of 20 students was formed, allowing them to join this ZK training camp and learn a rich, practical, and content-rich cryptography practice course.

Innovation + Incubation: The ZK Track Continues to Expand

With the careful guidance of three outstanding scholars and the full cooperation of students, the first ZK training camp course has successfully concluded. All participants who completed the course will receive a training camp scholarship and an NFT graduation badge issued by PrivacyIN.

However, beyond the course, the impact of the first ZK training camp course at the PrivacyIN Privacy Academy continues:

First, the series of courses born from this training camp will be invaluable learning materials for the entire encryption industry. PrivacyIN has uploaded course content videos for crypto enthusiasts who want to learn about ZK-related knowledge, thereby lowering the theoretical application threshold for developers and providing a comprehensive understanding of ZK development from theory to practice.

Secondly, the 20 students from this training camp successfully completed the course after a month of learning and reflection:

Each of them has developed a profound, comprehensive, and dialectical understanding of ZK based on their existing knowledge of cryptography: building an ecosystem as developers means that the essence of doing so is to attract, cultivate, and incentivize talent. The 20 students trained in this camp, with their high quality, high awareness, and high execution ability, will become a strong reserve force for the vigorous development of the ZK track.

Additionally, each student has proposed highly innovative and breakthrough application solutions for ZK technology during the graduation project phase, which will provide important and feasible exploratory directions for the future development of the ZK track.

After organizing and conducting technical training, PrivacyIN will also select high-quality projects that emerge during the training process, providing incubation support, including funding, technology, and operational assistance for initial project launches. With the dual push of talent and direction, the ZK track's ecological map will continue to expand, leading innovative trends and developing rapidly.

PrivacyIN's Second Training Camp is in Preparation

As a barometer of the encryption industry, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin once said:

"ZK-SNARK is a powerful cryptographic tool that is becoming an increasingly important part of applications built on and off the blockchain. But they are complex, both in terms of how they work and how we use them."

Vitalik's words also reflect the significance and value of the PrivacyIN Privacy Academy: dedicated to building an open community for the advocacy and research of cryptography and privacy technology, and collaborating with outstanding scholars and privacy technology developers worldwide to promote the innovation and implementation of ZK (Zero-Knowledge Proofs), MPC (Secure Multi-Party Computation), and FHE (Fully Homomorphic Encryption). PrivacyIN believes that for encryption technology to usher in the next stage of explosion, privacy and scalability issues cannot be ignored, and ZK technology will play an important role in solving these problems.

The first ZK training camp course has concluded, while the second training camp course is slowly unfolding. PrivacyIN Privacy Academy calls on cryptography and privacy enthusiasts worldwide to join in exploring the future of encryption and privacy development.

Interested students can follow the initiator of the PrivacyIN Privacy Academy, the official Twitter of LatticeX Foundation, to learn more about the registration time, specific course arrangements, and other detailed information for the second training camp.

Contact Information:

LatticeX Foundation Twitter