I was at Cedarcrypt as a speaker, and it was one of the most valuable experiences I’ve ever had.
Two types of attendees: researchers and experts delivered talks, workshops, and valuable insights from their fields on one side, and on the other side, there were committed students who well received the sessions, engaged in discussions, got inspired, and aspire to be the ones on stage next time.
My role there was to deliver a 3-hour workshop on how zk-SNARKs work. So I probably fell into the first category, the experts. In all honesty though, I am probably no more an expert than many of the students who were in that hall. In fact, until only a few weeks before the event, I didn’t really know how zk-SNARKs work. I had given a higher-level version of this material before, and I had been comfortable leaving the details in a black box. My initial intention was to stick to more or less that same level.
But I know that so much of cryptography is too beautiful to leave concealed. It really excites me whenever I can show others this beauty, and to see it, you have to understand it. Preparing for Cedarcrypt’s audience is what finally made me open that box.
And this is really most of what I want to say to the students who attended. A lot of the obstacles associated with cryptography are complex notation, large scary disclaimers, or unfair assumptions about your background knowledge (also gatekeeper wannabes).
The unfair assumptions about background in particular caused me a lot of anxiety and struggle during my studies. I took the photo below after completing one “self contained” cryptography course while studying for my master’s degree in 2020. I am super glad we now have LLMs that can act as personal tutors, ones you can ask stupid questions with no judgement.
I sincerely hope the workshop has given everyone a sufficient glimpse into what makes SNARKs possible, or at the very least, turned them in their minds from the scary black box they might have been into something accessible. In my experience, once you have opened one such box, you realize that the obstacles in getting into cryptography are much smaller than they look from the outside. Don’t get me wrong, some are indeed real and require a lot of work to overcome. IMO the biggest impact of Cedarcrypt is proving to yourself that you are capable of overcoming them. Perhaps you now see a path that was not visible before, and once you do, everything becomes possible.
