Snarky JS & Snapps: Hands-On Developer Feedback
There has been a lot of excitement over the last few weeks as developers have been itching to get started building Snapps and getting hands-on experience using SnarkyJS. After the first ever Snapps Bootcamp we tracked down some of the participants to get their initial feedback.
Discord ID: TauLepton#7102
What do you think of snarkyjs?
Prior to the bootcamp zkp has been a somewhat magical and mystical paradigm to me. Like many others, I learn by doing and SnarkyJS has lowered the barrier to entry for zk programming allowing me to get my hands dirty and build a zk circuit. This has really helped in demystify some of the zk magic. The API is very intuitive and is written in typescript which we all know and love.
What did you build?
For the bootcamp I built a hangman game. This is a two player game in which player one chooses some secret word which player two has to guess. Player two makes guesses of characters that she believes are included in the word. She has a finite number of lives. If she can guess correctly before exhausting her lives then she wins the game. You can read more about the game here https://github.com/frisitano/snapp-hangman.
Future potential for snapps?
Snapps open up completely new potentials for decentralised applications which I believe will usher in a new wave of innovation in the blockchain space. Snapps allow dapp developers to leverage private data in a privacy preserving fashion. Additionally, the fact that SnarkyJS is written in typescript provides access to a huge developer pool and will be a catalyst of migration of dev talent to the zk space.
“We are starting to see the benefit of building a developer friendly programming language for ZK Snarks. What stood out for me was the participants’ ability to quickly pick up the key complex concepts in zero knowledge proofs and to immediately apply those learnings into building privacy preserving web3 apps in a matter of few days.”
Bijan Shahrokhi Head of Product at O(1) Labs
Discord ID: Trivo#0001
What did you build?
I decided to build a proof of concept that combines three well known core topics. I tried to combine the power of zero knowledge proof powered smart contracts written in SnarkyJS with a well know DEFI feature – a token swap – and a user interface that everyone is used to from popular DEFI protocols. I took those three core concepts and made a “secret exchange” where you need to solve a quadratic equation before you can swap token – without having to share your solution with anyone else! mina.proxylabs.org
What do you think of SnarkyJS?
I am truly amazed by how easy SnarkyJS it makes for developers to write zero knowledge powered smart contracts. SnarkyJS offers a very developer friendly API and allows for fast smart contract development without the need for deep cryptographic and mathematical understanding of zero knowledge proofs.
What do you think about the future potential for snapps?
I am personally very excited for the possibilites zero knowledge contracts will be able to offer. There are many awesome use cases that will improve many well known dApp concepts that we know today. Off-chain computation and writing zero knowledge proofs will be as easy as writing hello world!
It was very exciting to finally see some smart-contract code on Mina in action and be able to try it hands on. The process of development is quite different from typical “Ethereum-like” code, keeping in mind that computation happens on client side unlocks massive potential while ZKPs give assurance of correctness of the computation. Looking forward to developing snapps as SnarkJS matures!
Discord ID:Karol#4597
Discord ID: jkimaba#3096
I am Jimmy (Jihyok) Kim, Software Engineer from South Korea. I’ve previously worked at MediBloc, NAVER, and 9GAG as a software engineer, currently exploring different opportunities as a startup founder. Hope to learn more about snapps development and the opportunities Mina’s tech brings.
How long have you know about the project?
I have been following Mina for around 9 months. I found Mina out through a crypto blogger in South Korea and was interested because I was getting tired of super heavy blockchains. Mina was one of the solutions that I wanted to build on top, if i had the opportunity.
What was the best thing about the bootcamp?
Such welcoming atmosphere and positive energy throughout the entire program. No questions or comments were treated lightly and everyone felt like they were genuinely thinking for the best of Mina. Especially as a foreigner, the welcoming atmosphere was really helping a lot.
What do you think about the potential for snapps?
Real potentials will be visible after testnet integration with SNAPPS, because the current bootcamp was an initial intro to the sdk and getting used to “snarky’s way of thinking”. All demos were basically in mocked environment with implementation of a rough state machine using snarky. But as the ecosystem grows, I think many products will flood out related to decentralized idea that integrates with sensitive data from Web 2.0. I imagine these snapps will build on top of each other creating bigger disruptive ideas, just like other layer1 solutions. More open discussions between members at MinaResearch will drive more mina improvement proposals eventually towards a better goal as a whole.
What are your next plans?
I have to finish up my mina bootcamp project, since it is unfinished. I am trying to go through everyone else’s snapps examples as well. Understanding how other’s did their implementations is a good lesson as well. After that i would check the open repositories from O(1) labs and see if i could contribute anything (documentations, testing, bugfix, etc) until the testnet integration is ready.