The ZK community aligned with the original mission of Web3: Summary of ZKDay Istanbul
As zero-knowledge (ZK) technology moves toward solving major use cases, the community behind the disruptive technology will continue to grow stronger. More than 1,200 ZK developers, community members and fans, including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, attended the latest zkday Istanbul event.
ZK meetings attract 1,500 to 4,000 attendees, and zkday Istanbul – as a forum for knowledge sharing and collaboration – has seen a significant increase in enthusiasm. The event builds on the success of zkday Paris, which attracts early-stage ZK startups and market leaders.
ZK focused projects have built relationships from different levels and with senior members of zkday sponsored projects such as Manta Network on Polyhedra Network and =nil; Foundation. Kenny Li, Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of Manta Network, spoke to Cointelegraph about zkday. he said:
“Zakday's interest and attendance is a testament to the community's passion for space, and we're excited to see that interest grow from country to country.”
In addition, Zkday Istanbul ran alongside Devconnect 2023, dedicated to the Ethereum community, developers and researchers.
The zkday Pitch competition was attended by a number of high-quality projects, many of which have already topped competitive events such as ETHGlobal. Lee expects to work with zkday Pitch sponsor ETHGlobal in the future to give more exposure to promising projects in the future.
Abner Jia, CEO of Polyhedra Network, echoed Lee's optimism about the growth of the ZK community, noting that interest in ZK technology is growing:
“As more projects and fans join the ZK ecosystem, it's clear that the community is on a strong growth trajectory.”
Improving user experience is a common goal in the ZK community as projects strive to bring users into the next generation of consumer products. Lee added:
“That's why we're focusing on our Manta Pacific Universal Cycles, where developers can launch EVM and offer ZK-as-a-service. [Ethereum Virtual Machine]Compatible decentralized applications that use ZK without defining cryptographic entities.
The zkday Istanbul audience highlighted the ZK community's strong bond with the core mission of developers, users and communities in Web3. Despite surface-level differences in focus and priorities such as privacy, scalability, and real-world implementation, the underlying nature of decentralization and innovation is consistent between the two communities.
zkday has become a tradition for @MantaNetwork and this time it happened in Istanbul.
Huge thanks to the 1000+ people who attended our event! pic.twitter.com/Ijg708Y15o
— zkday ️ Istanbul (devconnector) (@zkdayofficial) November 14, 2023
Year-on-year growth in the ZK dev community shows that the future of ZK technology holds incredible promise. She believes Jia will continue to be key to the growth of the ZK ecosystem. “We are all striving for a fair and decentralized future. Using zk is another step towards getting there!” Lee added.
Speaking about the future of ZK, Jia also described Polyhedra's newly deployed authentication system called Virgo on zkBridge. “We are open to cooperation. Entrepreneurs who want to make a mark in this space should closely monitor our progress and performance. It is a fast-growing field, so it is important to keep up with the latest developments in zk technology,” he concluded.
The growing ZK community is exploring directly applicable use cases to drive next-generation consumer products using intuitive EVM-compatible decentralized applications.
