Design of a Trustless Software Marketplace - John Burnham
Channel: Protocol Labs
Date: 2022-08-22

Bio: 
John is the co-founder and CEO of Yatima Inc, a YCombinator W22 startup and Filecoin Foundation grantee, which is building a verifiable computing platform that embeds formal proofs inside zero-knowledge proofs. John has been using and building functional programming languages for almost a decade. He previously helped create the Formality proof language, which was supported by an Ethereum Foundation Grant (presented at Devcon5), and the Morley Framework for verifying Tezos smart contracts. He was a Thiel Fellow in 2011 and dropped out of Dartmouth College.

Abstract:
When someone buys a computer program, how do they know that the program does what they want it to? When a programmer sells their work, how do they know that the buyer will actually pay them? Traditional software marketplaces solve these challenges with centralized, high-friction, structures, such as verified ratings, a complaint process, payment escrow, sometimes even spyware! Dependently typed programming languages, such as the Lean Theorem Prover, offer a different path, allowing developers to objectively specify the properties of software. By embedding the Lean typechecker inside a zero-knowledge proof system, such as the Lurk Language, we can enable efficient constant time verification of these properties. Finally, by integrating the Lurk proof verifier with a smart contract platform like the Filecoin Virtual Machine, we can create an on-chain marketplace where parties can transact impersonally in verifiably correct typed programs, without requiring the marketplace contract itself to custody or escrow payments.

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