Venture Firm a16z Dives into ZK Technology Research with 'Jolt' and 'Lasso' Projects Prominent VC firm Andreessen Horowitz
(a16z) has unveiled two open-source software projects focused on zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs.
These projects
aim to accelerate the core technology behind ZK proofs, a promising type of cryptography
that can help scale blockchains by increasing transaction throughput, reducing costs, and enhancing privacy, the firm said in a recent announcement.
The first project is
Lasso, which introduces an innovative technique
to expedite ZK systems.
The whitepaper
for Lasso was co-authored by Justin Thaler, an a16z member,
along with Srinath Setty—a Microsoft researcher—
and Riad Wahby, a computer science professor
at Carnegie Mellon University.
a16z has already released the code for Lasso under an open-source license, enabling external developers to utilize it
in their own projects. The other project is Jolt, which proposes
a particular type of zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM) that incorporates Lasso's innovations.
