During the all-hands, I was able to talk with various CC’s and project leads concerning a project that I have been working on: ACZ think tank.
The ACZ think tank is an on-going project to organize and catalog how various IFT projects use cryptographic primitives and zero-knowledge techniques. To facilitate this, the ACZ think tank aims to give a quick overview of each IFT project and subprojects.
Potential uses for the think tank:
- A curious CC can quickly gain a general understanding of each project.
- Project leads and researchers can use the think tank’s index to find out what project/subproject uses a given cryptographic primitive or zero-knowledge technique.
- Engineers can use the index to help find implementations within IFT.
The think tank won’t remove research into a given topic. However, it can be used to track down resources that other projects used or any notes on the topic.
As work on the think tank continues, additional context will be provided for how projects use various primitives and techniques. Any thoughts on this project are welcome.
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Thank you for this!
I actually had an experience recently which revealed a problem that something like this could’ve mitigated. I met someone from another team who was tasked with integrating the same cryptographic primitive which I had experience and knowledge of. We didn’t even know of each other before that moment. We were able to talk together and come up with some solutions to challenges (see “Free” User Acquisition for Blockchains with Gasless Transactions ). If something like this had existed, that dev could’ve looked and found a list of all people that have also integrated (or implemented) the same cryptographic primitive and reached out before, and by the time we met together we could’ve made even more progress on the task.
So on a higher-level, I want to argue that building out and supporting something like this (not just with content, but software) is critical.
There’s a concept called the OODA loop: The OODA Loop - The Decision Lab Basically it describes a 4-step cycle of generalized decision making: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. An operator must complete all four steps in order to make a decision and act on it. The ACZ think tank is relevant for reducing time spent in the first one or two stages, and making sure cycles are not wasted on buildings things the wrong way when they can be mitigated by reviewing existing implementations of a primitive or by coordinating with CCs who have experience with those primitives.
The OODA loop assumes an adversary, but in the case of a large distributed organization trying to build software that integrates with each other, our greatest adversary is entropy, which is accentuated by inefficient coordination. ACZ think tank improves coordination, reducing entropy, reducing wasted cycles, and thus reducing risk of failure.
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