# SigSing Osaka '24 - Yanis's Personal Write-up

First of all, this was an amazing experience to have the chance to work in person with other projects focused on building on top of snarkified signatures. It was a moment of deep sharing and work and I thank the organizers to have enabled that.

### Project Overview

The project we worked on with Saleel was born from a reflection that started back in December '23 at ETHIndia when hackers presented their Anon Aadhaar + Semaphore project. We believed it could significantly enhance end-user privacy by obscuring actions linked to one's identity, addressing the unresolved issue of not being able to hide your Anon Identity from the signature issuer. However, Semaphore has inherent constraints as it uses randomness as the identity seed and commits it to a Merkle Tree representing group membership. In our case, the identity is based on the government signature. We had to find a solution to retain the Merkle Tree commitment structure with a twist—specifically, how the leaf is committed to the group. The main challenge was balancing UX and security. Brainstorming together for two weeks provided a fantastic opportunity to explore potential solutions to these issues.

### Learnings

My main learnings stem from the side research I conducted during the residency. I finally completed "MoonMath," which provided a deep dive into SNARKs and Groth16, giving me a better intuition about constrained systems and the translation of Circom to R1CS to polynomial commitment. I am now eager to learn more about Plonk and Halo2. Additionally, discussions with others enriched my understanding, particularly around Binius, MPC, and FHE.

### Project Synergies

During the residency, we found significant synergies with other zk projects. Early discussions with the Proof of Passport team revealed common challenges, leading to a shared solution that integrated our diverse approaches. Conversations with the zk-email team, who have more experience with our common stack, also proved incredibly enlightening.

### Personal Reflections

The residency was a wonderful opportunity to collaborate with like-minded people in a shared physical and intellectual space. Every discussion was an opportunity to learn, and I particularly enjoyed the deep dive sessions we had at the beginning about Binius and TLS. The most enjoyable aspect of the residency was the chance to engage in meaningful discussions and reflections with peers, creating memorable moments and valuable takeaways.