Community

The ZkDay Istanbul event offered exposure and networking opportunities to new and upcoming ZK-based projects and entrepreneurs.

As zero-knowledge (ZK) technology marches its way toward solving mainstream use cases, the community backing the disruptive tech continues to grow stronger. Over 1,200 ZK developers, community members and enthusiasts, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, attended the latest zkDay Istanbul event. 

ZK meetups attract 1,500 to 4,000 attendees, and zkDay Istanbul — as a platform for knowledge sharing and collaboration — witnessed a significant increase in enthusiasm as well. The event was built on top of the success of zkDay Paris, which attracted early-stage ZK startups and market leaders.

ZK-focused projects from various stages built connections and interacted with top members of zkDay sponsor projects, such as Manta Network, co-hosted by Polyhedra Network and =nil; Foundation. Kenny Li, the chief operating officer and co-founder of the Manta Network, spoke to Cointelegraph about zkDay. He said:

“The interest and attendance for zkDay is a testament to the community’s interest in the space, and we are excited to see that interest continuing to grow from country to country.”

Additionally, zkDay Istanbul ran alongside Devconnect 2023, an event dedicated to Ethereum community, builders and researchers.

The zkDay Pitch competition saw participation from numerous high-quality projects, many of which have previously topped competitive events such as ETHGlobal. Li anticipates future collaborations with zkDay Pitch sponsor ETHGlobal to provide greater exposure to promising upcoming projects.

Abner Jia, the CEO of Polyhedra Network, echoed Li’s optimism about the ZK community’s growth, highlighting the surge in interest in ZK technology:

“With more projects and enthusiasts joining the ZK ecosystem, it’s clear that the community is on a strong growth trajectory.”

Improving user experience remains a common goal across the ZK community as projects strive to onboard users into the next-generation consumer products. Li added:

“That’s why we are so focused on our universal circuits at Manta Pacific, where we can offer ZK-as-a-service so developers can hit the ground running, launching EVM [Ethereum Virtual Machine]-compatible decentralized applications that leverage ZK without having to figure out the cryptographic elements.”

Attendees of zkDay Istanbul highlighted the ZK community’s strong convergence to the core mission of developers, users and community in Web3 in general. Despite the surface-level differences in focus areas and priorities, such as privacy, scalability and real-world applications, the fundamental ethos of decentralization and innovation remains consistent between the two communities.

zkDay has become a tradition for @MantaNetwork and this time it took place in Istanbul.

Endless thanks to the 1000+ people who attended our event!✨@zkdayofficial Istanbul adventure started at the Registration Desk! pic.twitter.com/Ijg708Y15o

— zkDay ️ Istanbul (Devconnect) (@zkdayofficial) November 14, 2023

The year-over-year growth in the ZK dev community suggests that the future of ZK technology holds incredible promise. Jia believes that collaboration remains key for the ZK ecosystem to thrive. “We are all striving for a fair, decentralized future. Leveraging zk is just another step to get there!,” added Li. 

Speaking about the future of ZK, Jia also revealed Polyhedra’s newly deployed distributed proof system on zkBridge, named deVirgo. “We are open for collaborations. Entrepreneurs looking to make a mark in this space should closely watch our progress and implementations. It’s essential to keep up with the latest developments in zk technology, as it’s a rapidly evolving field,” he concluded.

The budding ZK community is exploring use cases that can be directly applied to drive next-generation consumer products using intuitive EVM-compatible decentralized applications.