Encode Club ZK Bootcamp July Summary
The July 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.
Want to join the ZK force? Applications are open for a new cohort starting in autumn!
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 July 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 nine incredible partners sponsoring this bootcamp: Tenderly, Marlin, Pocket Network, Tellor, Ledger, Chainlink, Axiom, Taiko and Hexens.
Tellor Workshop
Brenda from Tellor talked about Oracles; why they are important, the challenges they’re facing, oracle types, evaluating oracles and much more!
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.
Tenderly Workshop
Nenad from Tenderly gave a high-level overview of everything they do and create for web3 developers. He demonstrated how can Tenderly be used in conjunction with Hardhat to test smart contracts. Additionally, he demonstrated process automation — listening to things happening to the built smart contract and reacting in a particular way.
Pocket Network Workshop
Adrienne and Harry from Pocket presented what Pocket is all about and talked about RPCs, Gateways and briefly touched upon what’s coming up in the future.
Axiom Workshop
Yu Sun from Axiom talked about what problem is Axiom solving and explained how to scale data access in computation for smart contracts in an application specifically.
Taiko Workshop
Mamy from Taiko presented what Taiko is all about, talked about High-Assurance, software failures, what are the stakes if something goes wrong and much more!
Chainlink Workshop
Richard from Chainlink Labs talked about what Chainlink is, ran through all the different products Chainlink has and presented a hands-on workshop about using Chainlink VRF to get some random numbers on chain.
Apply for Autumn Bootcamps
Read more about our bootcamps in our official announcement or visit our website.
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.
