Encode Club ZK Bootcamp April Summary
The April cohort of the Encode Club ZK Bootcamp has recently concluded its five-week journey, and it was a resounding success. This was an intensive program aimed to equip participants with a solid theoretical foundation and practical understanding of zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, with a focus on the smart contract language Cairo.
Leading the cohort was our highly experienced instructor Laurence Kirk, his team from Extropy and a Teaching Assistant. Throughout the program, they provided invaluable insights and mentorship to the participants and also offered one-on-one support as needed.
The bootcamp featured a comprehensive curriculum that covered all aspects of ZK proofs, including the basics of cryptography, different types of ZK proofs, and their applications in blockchain technology. The participants also received hands-on training in using the Cairo programming language to build smart contracts.
The bootcamp’s instructional format comprised insightful lectures, practical exercises, and personalized mentorship, allowing the participants to deeply understand ZK proofs and Cairo. The supportive and collaborative learning environment created by the instructors and teaching assistants ensured that participants received the attention and guidance they needed to succeed.
By the end of the program, the participants were well-versed in the intricacies of ZK proofs. Armed with this knowledge, they are now well-prepared to apply their skills to real-world applications of blockchain technology.
Overall, the April cohort of the ZK Bootcamp was an outstanding success, thanks to the dedication of Laurence Kirk, the Extropy team, and the enthusiastic participation of the bootcamp participants. Their journey has come to an end, but their newfound skills will undoubtedly serve them well in the exciting and dynamic field of blockchain technology.
If you’d like to be in the next ZK Bootcamp cohort, stay tuned—applications will open soon!
How it worked
Classes ran for 1.5 hours daily from Monday to Thursday and featured a mix of theory and demos, alongside homework.
Classes were live and fully remote with daily Zoom sessions and dedicated private Discord discussion channels.
The curriculum covered:
- 4 weeks of teaching and 1 week of partner presentations
- Maths and cryptography introduction
- General theory of zero-knowledge proofs
- zkSNARK / zkSTARK theory
- Using StarkNet
- Using Cairo
- Developing with Cairo
- Use of ZK proofs with blockchains — ZK rollups
- ZK proofs as proof of computation
- Data privacy
- ZK proofs in cryptocurrencies — Zcash / Monero
- ZK proofs and DeFi — StarkEx
Sponsors
The bootcamp also entailed a sponsor week. We had five incredible partners sponsoring this bootcamp: Tenderly, Pocket, Marlin, Tellor and Ledger.
Tenderly Workshop
Nenad from Tenderly gave a high-level overview of everything they do and create for web3 developers. He demonstrated the things our participants could do to use Tenderly for different purposes.
Pocket Workshop
Daniel from Pocket talked about decentralised infrastructure and had a fantastic chat with bootcamp participants!
Marlin Workshop
In this workshop, Roshan from Marlin walked bootcamp participants through the Oyster platform, talked about the problems it solves, showed how it worked and provided some useful resources.
Tellor Workshop
Tim from Tellor talked about Oracles; why are they important, the challenges they’re facing, oracle types, evaluating oracles and much more!
Next bootcamp cohort?
Stay tuned on Encode’s channels! Applications for future bootcamps will open soon.
About Encode Club
Encode Club is a web3 education community learning and building together through fantastic programmes with the leading protocols in the space. Together we organise programmes like education series, bootcamps, hackathons, accelerators both online and in person. We then help our community get jobs and funding for projects and startups. Read more here.
Questions
If you have any questions, please email: bootcamp@encode.club or reach out on Discord.
