First Principles Ep. 7 with Noam Nisan More than 30 years ago, Gödel Prize winner @noamnisan helped develop a proof technique he never expected anyone to use in the real world. Today, the sum-check protocol sits at the heart of some of the fastest modern SNARKs. Nisan traces its unlikely journey from early work on interactive proofs and IP = PSPACE to practical systems for verifiable computation. But Nisan’s career also tells a broader story about how research responds to technological change. When the web arrived in the 1990s, he deliberately left a field in which he was already a leading researcher to understand a new problem: How do you get independent actors on the internet to cooperate when they have different incentives? That question helped give rise to algorithmic game theory — and, decades later, brought Nisan back to questions around blockchain fees, token economics, and protocol design. Hosted by @Tim_Roughgarden with @SuccinctJT 0:00 Intro 1:28 Noam Nisan and the origins of verifiable computation 2:58 Why Noam Nisan left complexity theory 7:52 POPcorn, distributed computing, and early blockchain-like ideas 11:10 The birth of algorithmic game theory 16:14 Justin Thaler discovers the sum-check protocol 25:05 From arithmetization to LFKN 27:06 The story behind IP = PSPACE 30:40 Why sum-check matters for modern SNARKs 31:15 What is a SNARK? 38:52 The key idea behind sum-check: turning two into one 44:03 When SNARKs went from theory to practice 46:03 Why blockchains were the breakthrough use case 50:36 Noam Nisan’s move into blockchain economics 56:15 EIP-1559, transaction fees, and efficient blockspace 1:02:07 From theoretical computer science to real-world systems 1:08:49 Boiling down the sum-check protocol: Two become one 1:10:58 Is the sum-check protocol optimal?

First Principles Ep. 6 with Shafi Goldwasser What if you could prove something is true without revealing why it’s true? Turing Award winner Shafi Goldwasser tells the origin story of zero-knowledge proofs: how a playful question about playing poker securely over the telephone led her, Silvio Micali, and Charles Rackoff to rethink what a mathematical proof could be. Goldwasser traces those ideas through interactive proofs, the sum-check protocol, SNARKs, and the systems now used to verify computation and preserve privacy on blockchains. She also reflects on why breakthrough ideas are often rejected at first, how toy problems can produce foundational theories, and whether AI systems should have to prove their answers. Hosted by @Tim_Roughgarden with @SuccinctJT 00:00 Intro 03:36 How mental poker inspired zero-knowledge proofs: Proving that something is true without revealing the underlying information 06:30 The simulation paradigm and the meaning of “zero knowledge” 08:33 Why the original paper was repeatedly rejected 10:33 How interactive proofs became more powerful than conventional proofs 13:36 The road to modern SNARKs 19:02 Why the sum-check protocol is so useful for verifiable computation 25:31 Why many so-called “zk proofs” are not actually zero knowledge 34:06 Why toy examples, playfulness, and narratives can produce deep theory 37:23 The role of rigor and computational assumptions in cryptography 42:44 Applying zero-knowledge proofs to law, evidence, and secret software 45:23 Training AI systems to provide proofs alongside their answers 54:27 Why genuinely new ideas are often difficult for experts to recognize

First Principles Ep. 6 with Ron Rivest Long before the internet became a place to bank, transact, or build blockchains, Turing Award winner Ron Rivest helped solve a foundational problem: how can strangers communicate securely without first meeting to exchange a secret? Rivest tells the story of inventing RSA with Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, why digital signatures fascinated him even more than encryption, and how cryptographic hashes, government pressure, patents, and standards shaped the security infrastructure we rely on today. Rivest shares his unusually candid views on quantum computing, post-quantum security, and more. Hosted by @Tim_Roughgarden with @danboneh. 00:00 Intro: the two problems that could break modern cryptography 01:10 Why Ron Rivest’s work underpins the internet and blockchains 08:10 Before public-key cryptography, there was no theory of security 11:05 The open problem that led to RSA 13:55 The night Ron Rivest discovered the core idea behind RSA 17:55 Why digital signatures were the real breakthrough 19:14 The RSA challenge — and a prediction that was off by quadrillions of years 28:33 How government pressure shaped cryptographic standards 30:36 Designing the hash functions that made digital signatures practical 33:26 The Fiat–Shamir transformation, explained 38:04 Building a cryptography company before the web existed 42:31 Will quantum computers ever become powerful enough to break RSA? 48:02 The cryptography securing the internet, elections, and everyday life 50:11 What surprised Dan: Quantum giveth and quantum taketh away

First Principles Ep. 5 with Paul Milgrom One of the most important auction designs in modern history was sold to the FCC on a 3.5-inch disk. Nobel Prize winner Paul Milgrom on auctions, price discovery, and how mechanism design became real-world infrastructure — from spectrum auctions to DeFi. Hosted by @Tim_Roughgarden with @skominers. 00:00 Intro: economics assumptions that are “just wrong” 02:19 Scott Kominers and Tim Roughgarden on the genius of Paul Milgrom 05:35 An intro to the  Glosten-Milgrom model: The paper that created entire fields of economics 07:48 The auction theory breakthroughs of the 1980s 17:15 Why market microstructure matters for DeFi 24:17 When math teaches economics something new 32:38 How theory became spectrum auction design 36:22 The floppy disk that helped convince the FCC 41:05 What changed when auctions moved online 45:28 The auction that reorganized television 1:07:30 What economics and computer science can learn from each other 1:13:22 Futures markets for compute 1:15:12 Paul Milgrom’s advice for builders

First Principles Ep. 4 with Alvin Roth Long before crypto made coordination programmable, Nobel Prize winner Alvin Roth was designing markets where coordination could save lives, matching doctors to hospitals, students to schools, and kidney donors to the patients who need them. Roth explains why markets are not just natural forces, but engineered systems; why the details of timing, congestion, incentives, and trust can make or break a marketplace; and why some of the most important markets are the ones where simply exchanging money can’t do the work. Hosted by @Tim_Roughgarden with @skominers. 00:00 Intro: Why market design matters 04:18 The economist as engineer 08:09 When theory meets the real world 07:02 Fixing the medical residency match 15:32 Why markets unravel 18:22 Redesigning NYC high school admissions 28:05 The hidden problem of congestion 34:47 How kidney exchange saves lives 45:26 How the internet changed market design 48:25 Airbnb, Uber and smarter marketplaces 51:28 Repugnant transactions and moral economics 53:32 When markets need social support 54:32 The unexpected effects of criminalizing surrogacy 01:04:58 Preference signals and the job market 01:18:53 A broken market: resettling refugees and other migrants

Adam Neumann on first principles for founders: ask why until nobody can answer, then ask again. "It's our second WeWork building. We need to do the floor. We only had ninety thousand dollars." "I said, 'How much is the floor?' Everybody's like, 'The floor is between thirty to forty-five thousand.' I said, 'Why?' They said, 'What do you mean why? These are the quotes.'" "I said, 'Can you break down the quotes for me? How many pieces of floor? How many nails? How much glue? How many hours of work per person? How much does each person cost?' No one could answer." "I called the top three guys and said, 'I would like you to earn fifteen percent above the cost. I think that's a fair margin. Do you agree?' All three of them said yes." "Very quickly, that first floor, instead of thirty to forty-five thousand, was twelve thousand." "You can call it first principles. You can call it asking every question. But if you're the entrepreneur, or if you're an employee or a partner, ask why." @AdamNeumann w/ @StevenBartlett

Elon Musk on first principles. "A good framework for thinking is physics… first principles reasoning." "Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy." Most of life runs on analogy — copy what others do with slight variations, because that is how you get through the day. New work cannot. If the answer is not already on the shelf, you have to drop to physics: what is actually true, then build up. • Analogy = copy + tweak • First principles = fundamental truths, then reason up • Something new → physics approach "But when you want to do something new, you have to apply the physics approach."

Kevin Warsh’s principles deserve more attention. They challenge certain thought processes and approaches that have become ingrained at the Fed, including some that have led to major policy mistakes, writes Mickey D. Levy