Freeman Slaughter
Freeman Slaughter is a postdoc at the University of South Florida, having obtained his Ph.D. from Clemson University, with a focus on zero-knowledge proofs. He has been spearheading the push to migrate cryptocurrencies to post-quantum standards, having published a few of them himself.
Sessions
Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) are reshaping the landscape of privacy, scalability, and trust in decentralized systems. In this workshop, we’ll explore how ZKPs let one party convince another that a statement is true, without revealing anything else about it. We aim to demystify the core ideas behind interactive protocols, walk through modern ZKP constructions, and examine how they’re deployed in cryptocurrencies and modern privacy-preserving designs. Participants will leave with a clear understanding of how the "prove without revealing" paradigm is shaping blockchain technology, verifiable computation, and the next generation of cryptographic standards.
Quantum computers represent a looming threat to much of the critical foundations of modern cryptography. Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) utilizes hard mathematical problems that we believe resist the so-called "quantum advantage," to preserve security and privacy. In this workshop we will unpack the principles behind the leading PQC families such as lattice and code based constructions, then showcase their implications for cryptocurrencies, digital signatures, and zero-knowledge protocols.