technologyJul 29, 20261:04:13pending
Private Information Retrieval (PIR) with Alex Hoover
About this episode
In this episode, Anna and Kobi are joined by Alex Hoover, cryptographer and Assistant Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology. They explore Private Information Retrieval (PIR)—a cryptographic primitive that lets users query public databases without revealing what they're looking for.
They trace PIR's evolution from its early theoretical foundations to modern, practical constructions, unpack key variants like batch and keyword PIR, and discuss emerging blockchain applications, from private state queries to Merkle proof generation. They also examine the latest research making PIR increasingly practical, and why it could become a core building block for privacy-preserving systems.
A quick note: Alex mentioned during the interview that preprocessing in SimplePIR is independent of the database. But it is in fact independent of the queried index, and does depend on the database. He asked us to highlight this correction
Related Links
**If you like what we do:** * Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree * Subscribe to our podcast newsletter * Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm * Join us on Telegram * Catch us on YouTube **Support the show:** * Patreon * ETH - Donation address * BTC - Donation address Read transcript
- One Server for the Price of Two: Simple and Fast Single-Server Private Information Retrieval
- Don’t be Dense: Efficient Keyword PIR for Sparse Databases
- The two papers that introduced client-side preprocessing:
- Piano: Extremely Simple, Single-Server PIR with Sublinear Server Computation
- Simple and Practical Amortized Sublinear Private Information Retrieval using Dummy Subsets
- Plinko: Single-Server PIR with Efficient Updates via Invertible PRFs (builds on Piano and RMS)
- Doubly Efficient Private Information Retrieval and Fully Homomorphic RAM Computation from Ring LWE (LMW23)
- Lower Bounds for PIR with Preprocessing from Blackbox Cryptography
**If you like what we do:** * Find all our links here! @ZeroKnowledge | Linktree * Subscribe to our podcast newsletter * Follow us on Twitter @zeroknowledgefm * Join us on Telegram * Catch us on YouTube **Support the show:** * Patreon * ETH - Donation address * BTC - Donation address Read transcript
Get every episode summarized
Each time Zero Knowledge publishes, we email you a written briefing from the transcript — the topics, who appeared, and any specific claims, with the ad reads skipped.
Email me new episodesFree for 3 shows. No card needed.
Hosts & guests
No transcript yet
This episode has not been transcribed. Request it and it moves to the front of the queue.
More episodes
More from Zero Knowledge
The Evolution from ZKP2P to Peer with Richard Liang
Zero Knowledge
Sep 9, 202646:00completed
Minimmit, Multimmit and the New Consensus Frontier with Patrick O'Grady
Zero Knowledge
Aug 5, 20261:12:01pending
Alex Ozdemir on where Theorem Provers and ZK meet
Zero Knowledge
Jul 15, 20261:01:57pending
Sergey Gorbunov on TEEs and the Arc Privacy Sector
Zero Knowledge
Jul 8, 20261:07:07pending