On Friday, the w3.hub team was amazing and opened the doors to their big venue in Kreuzberg to the ZK Hack community for this last weekend of the BBW, and for the 30th (!) event there in 14 days! (They’ve since dubbed this week the Berlin Blockchain Madness 2025..) ZK Hack took over and soon our neon colors, swag, and crowd kicked off ZK Hack Berlin!

As the weekend progressed, so did the temperature in Berlin, reaching a peak of 34 degrees on Sunday. An ice cream freezer was brought in, and we all welcomed the popsicles! 

We closed off the hackathon with a great ceremony, and official goodbyes, but as the dusk fell many made their way to the nearby biergarten to enjoy the more soothing summer evenings of Berlin.

Day 1: Setting the Stage

Friday at 5.30 pm, with people pumped after 2 weeks of events, the hackathon started off with a bang as soon as we opened the doors of the w3.hub building in Kreuzberg! Long-time ZK Hack friends and new faces came in, some attending their nth event of the week, others just joining for the weekend to soak up the vibe and connect with our community.

Kickoff

Time had come for the official ZK Hack Berlin Kickoff, where the ZK Hack team outlined the weekend’s schedule and all important information (prizes! ), and where sponsors took the stage to introduce their bounties and what they were hoping to see built or implemented by the hackers.

Happy Hour

Right after dinner was the perfect time for a Friday night Happy Hour, with the help of our partner Xion! In good Berlin fashion we opened the bar with a choice of softs, beers, white wine in ½ bottles, Jager and special treats!

We were joined by many ZK friends that evening, and it was the perfect moment for sharing hack ideas & forming teams for the rest of the weekend. Many hackers jumped straight in however and started hacking until we closed!

Day 2: 200% Hacking

All of Saturday (and well into Sunday morning!) was time for hacking, with Office Hours throughout the day for participants to meet the engineering teams from our Based Sponsors Irreducible and Aleo.

As the day progressed, we had the chance to interact with the hackers, noting the impressive quality and variety of projects shaping up for Sunday submissions. Here are some notable projects that would later contend for the top prizes. Beware, this is not a very short list, there were truly a lot of projects that our jury had to debate over (and most were awarded bounties, too):

• zkEMV: MrNerdHair built an identity provider on the Hyli blockchain that lets you use your payment card (Europay, Mastercard, Visa) as a hardware wallet,
• MPSee: Kai Jun, Bing & Purple built a scheme that allows a user to distribute secret shares to a group of guardians, who can collectively help recover a wallet without ever learning the user’s actual address or messages they are signing,
• Zk-fabric-rs: Arpit worked on a Polylithic Syntax ZK Joint Proof System,
• TreeFold: Simon & Daniel implemented tree-style folding in the HyperNova folding scheme,
• Privatestargatefinance.eth: Ben rebuilt stargate.finance with a privacy layer on top,
• bargo: Franco built an opinionated, developer-friendly CLI for Noir development,
• Leaf Me Hard: ordian, Syed & Andrew attempted to solve a problem of Merkle (Patricia) Trie (MPT) inclusion compression,
• zkML-GOODBLEEP: CJ built a swarm of agents that competes to generate the BEST music,
• ZK Shroud Arena: Nuttakit & Lattawit built a real-time proof-of-location game with custom zones,
• Kinky Swap: Gianfranco & Reymo built a tool for non-vanilla cross-chain swaps enabling atomic, anonymous cross-chain bridges and swaps between Aleo and Aztec,
• Konnektoren: Christian & Sofiia built a tool where users need to privately verify their identity to obtain a certificate on a learning platform,
• ZKAZ: Morris built a P2P crypto betting platform that leverages ZKPs for fair and transparent bet resolution.

Hacking continued well into the night …

Day 3: Last Push

There’s no second best to the vibes in the last few hours before submission of a hackathon! Last touches to the projects, video presentation recordings, high tension (… or chill, for some!). The deadline was noon!

Jury

For this edition, hackers had the chance to present to an amazing group of 20(!) judges that were with us throughout the weekend:

Anna Rose (ZeroKnowledge.fm), Aurelien Nicolas (Inversed.tech), Billy Rennekamp (Trifle), Connor (Celestia), Dev (osmosis), Evi / Tranquil Flow, Gaylord (Miden), Hudson Jameson (Polygon Labs), Koen van Marrewijk (ZKV), Liam Eagen (Alpen Labs), Lisa Akselrod (Aztec), Marko (Binary Builders), Praneeth Srikanti (Ethereal Ventures), Rene Reinsberg (Celo / Self), Stefan (Gnosis), Susannah Evans (IBC), Sylve Chevet (Hyli), Theo Madzou (ZKPassport), Yulia (Anoma) and Zeng Huy Tay (Gnosis).

45 projects were submitted on Sunday, and we broke the judges into 5 teams of 4, calling hackers to present to our judges. It was really challenging to dive in in such a short time, especially for some very technical projects. But they made it through, and after 1.5 hours, all the projects had been reviewed and the group had their shortlist. 

The judges got back together and a small group broke out to review the most technical projects and choose the chewing glass winner. The remaining judges shared their experience in the judging rooms and started to narrow down the top teams and eventually were able to name our 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners. The remaining shortlist candidates were shared with the larger hacker group, so that the community could choose the hackers choice! 

In parallel, we had the sponsors judging their respective bounty tracks, engaging with the various projects who were eligible to their own criteria.

We can’t express how grateful we are that this amazing group of judges spent their Sunday with all of us – Thanks again for your invaluable insights in judging such a great set of projects!

Closing Ceremony

By 16:00, everyone was ready for the closing ceremony! We had the Based Sponsors join us on stage to give out their bounty prizes. Congratulations to Roman (Zerocheck Optimization), Sean & Igor (The Last Checksum) for taking home Irreducible’s bounties, and to Mohit (LeoMafia), Gianfranco & Reymo (Kinky Swap), and Jordan (Pessimistic ZK Fair Liquidations) for claiming Aleo’s bounties!

It was then time for the Winners of ZK Hack Berlin! We announced our Chewing Glass, Hackers’ Choice and Top 3 winners of ZK Hack Montréal. Over 40K$ in prizes were awarded to the hackers that day!

The winners had the opportunity to present their work to the audience, showcasing the details of their projects and the impressive results of their efforts.

ZK Hack Berlin Winners

And here are the winners…

Hacker’s Choice
The Hacker’s Choice Prize went to TruthSeeker: Romario built a privacy-first proof-of-video authenticity platform that embeds cryptographic proof directly inside video files using steganography.
repo: https://github.com/RomarioKavin1/TruthSeeker

Chewing Glass
The Chewing Glass Prize, a ZK Hack favorite, went to Anon Proxies: Ying Tong, Nico, Andrija & Marcin built an implementation of the new crypto primitive: Anonymous, Timed and Revocable Proxy Signatures (https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/833)!
repo: https://github.com/therealyingtong/schnorr-tokens

Third Place
The ZK Hack 3rd Prize went to God’s Hand: Gabriel built a solution addressing the lack of transparency, privacy, and accountability in disaster relief and donations!
repo: https://github.com/GabrielGodsHand

Second Place
The ZK Hack 2nd Prize went to ZK-AntiCheat: pop_eax built a first-of-a-kind privacy preserving anticheat engine!
repo: https://github.com/zk-AntiCheat/

ZK Hack Grand Winner
And the ZK Hack 1st Prize went to ZeroHour: Leo & Georg pushed the limit of client-side ZKP generation by creating proofs of steps walked on a PineTime, an open-source smartwatch w/ only has 64kb RAM!
repo1: https://github.com/leonardoalt/InfiniTime/tree/zkhack
repo2: https://github.com/leonardoalt/InfiniSim/tree/zkhack

Congratulations to the winners of this edition, and to all the participants!

Bye for now

So many good projects came out of this edition (see for yourself the long list in this post!), making this edition a great showcase of the large scope of ideas and potential applications of ZK and programmable cryptography!

And just like that, ZK Hack Berlin came to an end!

A big shoutout to our fantastic partners – Based Sponsors Irreducible and Aleo,

We’re also grateful to our Community Sponsors Boundless, Horizen, Aztec, ZKPassport, Hyli, Arbitrum, Gnosis, Self, & Xion, our Prize Sponsor ZKV, and our Media Partner ZeroKnowledge.fm,

Thanks again to our judges, who did an incredible job reviewing all the fantastic projects submitted by the participants, 

Much love to the ZK Hack team Anna, Quentin & Agni and to our host Gaylord,

To the volunteers that joined us this weekend, we hope you had a blast!

To the team at w3.hub, for hosting us and your big help with everything,

To Henrik for the AV work all weekend,

To Zero-knowledge Audiovisual Club for hosting a recording station all day Saturday, we’re excited to hear the hacker stories soon!

Thanks to our Platform partner Devfolio for supporting the hackers all weekend, 

Lastly, a big big thank you to all the hackers, we can’t wait to see you at the next one!

For the latest updates and more, follow ZK Hack on X/Twitter or Bluesky, and also make sure to pop into our Discord to join the ZK conversation!

The post ZK Hack Berlin appeared first on ZK Hack.

But how did it all start?

We at ZK Hack had been thinking for a while about how to make a sequel to ZK Whiteboard Sessions Season 1, which was produced and released back in 2022. The first season had been a collaboration with Polygon, and while we had floated the idea of working together again on the second season with them, the deal never fully materialised. So instead, we began looking for other ways to fund the series.

When Ethereum Foundation announced the ZK Grants Round, an initiative co-funded with Aztec, Polygon, Scroll, Taiko, and zkSync, this looked like a perfect fit for our project. And so we applied with the ZK Whiteboard Sessions Season 2 project, initially planning six modules with a release date set for late summer 2024.

After a couple of months of back and forth (and adjusting the release date to fall 2024), we were officially one of the 25 grantees – and the only one focused on ZK education!

Then, we were ready to work on the interesting part:

What would the modules be all about?

Since ZK is still a nascent technology, many new research papers have come out since Season 1 of the ZK Whiteboard Sessions, and with them, many new techniques, protocols, implementations and tools. But in order to determine what to cover in season 2, we had a significant advantage: our ZK Hack Study Groups.

Throughout 2023 and 2024, we ran three cohorts of the ZK Whiteboard Study Group, where community members gather on ZK Hack’s Discord to go through the modules, watching the videos and learning together. Here is how it worked: during the week, Study Group members would watch a ZKWS module on their own and then compile their questions in a shared document.

The group would then meet on Discord to discuss, go through our questions together, and learn. These Study Group cohorts provided very useful feedback about the modules from Season 1 – helping us to identify what worked, what didn’t, what was missing, and what needed some updates.

But before digging into that, let’s take a moment to thank Nico Mohnblatt. Nico has been attending most of the Study Group sessions, and filled the role of the SNARK expert able to clarify the trickiest concepts. The ZK Whiteboard Study Groups have been a great way to learn, made all the better because of his invaluable and continued support

Nico also joined us in the programming team for Season 2 and played a key role in curating the topics for the six modules, working closely with Bobbin, seasoned host from Season 1, and the ZK Hack team. The first brainstorming was already quite fruitful, with these suggestions coming up:

• Sum-check and linear-time provers (GKR) 
• Lookups: lookups for gigantic tables, VMs from lookups only, various ways of doing lookups (multiset checks vs. PLOOKUP vs. LogUp vs. cq etc.)
• Binius / tower of binary fields
• FRI (which was not covered in much depth in season 1)

The next step consisted in figuring out a way to tackle some of these via a more “meta” approach, with general topics instead of a specific system. After some polishing, we had a list of five modules – with almost definitive titles!

• Sum-check + GKR 
• Lookups: Update + different characteristics
• zkVMs (using sum-check & lookups)
• Small fields / binary fields 
• Evolving treatment of FRI / STIR

At this point, we needed a sixth topic. As Nico kept stumbling upon some misconceptions on X, he suggested doing a module about what zero-knowledge is – as in, ZK the cryptographic property. For instance, saying “Proofs only use hashes of the public inputs, effectively making the input data private” is not correct; hence the need for covering the formal definition of ZK, and how to prove that certain protocols have it or not.

And that was it! “What is Zero Knowledge (like, actually)?” was added to the list, and we had our program to start planning for the production.

To do so, the next question was…

Who could be the expert guests for the sessions?

We had secured our second host by then, with Tracy Livengood joining Nico in our series – thanks Tracy

Some guest names came up quite quickly: Ariel Gabizon to talk about lookups, Uma Roy to dig into zkVMs, Jim Posen to explain how to use small fields, and of course, Justin Thaler for the sum-check module.

That’s when Professor Dan Boneh expressed interest in recording a bonus module on FRI – fantastic news indeed! And he even suggested a topic for an extra module: Updates on Folding. With this and some more confirmations from lecturers, we had our full list of modules and guests:

• What is Zero Knowledge (like, actually)?, with David Wong
• The Sum-Check Protocol, with Justin Thaler
• An Update on Lookups, with Ariel Gabizon
• RISC-V zkVMs, with Uma Roy
• Small Fields, Binary Fields, with Jim Posen
• An Update on Folding, with Albert Garreta
• FRI and Proximity Proofs, with Dan Boneh

Production

The production of the modules was no small feat, as we had to work around timing and geography to get the guests and hosts in front of a whiteboard for us to film. The module on zkVMs was the first to get recorded, as the ZK Hack team, Uma and Tracy were all in Brussels during ETHCC week. Our next recording opportunity came at ZK Hack Montréal, where both Nico and David were present.

A week earlier, we had also done the Sum-Check module in New York with Justin and Tracy, with members of our team flying down to facilitate. This one would later present a tough challenge in post-production due to light reflections on the whiteboard – a common problem with this video series (it’s called whiteboard sessions after all…). But the ZK Hack team is not afraid of any tough challenge, and we removed the reflections, almost frame by frame!

Another module was then shot in Berlin with Jim around Web3 Summit 2024, and the last two were recorded back-to-back after zkSummit12 in Lisbon with Nico interviewing Ariel and Albert.

Release

We started releasing the modules on October 3rd, with a semimonthly cadence. Incidentally, the ZKWS Season 2 publication calendar coincided with the Zero Knowledge Podcast’s hiatus – allowing all zk-enthusiasts to still get some fresh new zk-content and satisfy their zk-thirst

After a break for the winter holiday, the release of the two bonus modules about FRI recorded by Dan Boneh were also very well received by the community, and were a fantastic way to close the Season 2.

The modules in general have seen solid engagement – half of them already have over 1,000 views, which is not bad for such advanced technical content!

But…

Is it really over?

That’s a rhetorical question
First off, we have been adding subtitles to the Season 2 modules: subtitles in English, but also subtitles in Mandarin with the excellent help of the Coset community. We hope it helps with educating and onboarding more people into ZK, and we are open to suggestions and collaborations to add more languages – feel free to contact us or submit a PR on GitHub. Do you know any Spanish speakers?

Then, more Study Groups! We have already run a fourth cohort of the ZK Whiteboard Study Group right after the release of Season 2’s modules 1 through 6, and we are organising a fifth cohort solely on modules 7 and 8, “FRI and Proximity Proofs”, in March 2025.

Whether you are new to the space or more advanced, we recommend you check ZK Hack’s Discord as we will keep hosting more of these Study Groups; there is always something to learn by asking questions, or even just by listening to the Q&A of the group.

As we wrap up Season 2, we are also looking ahead. The discussions sparked by these modules – whether in Study Groups or more generally on Discord and at our events – will be invaluable in shaping what comes next. There is still a lot to explore in ZK, and we are always thinking about how to make the ZK Whiteboard Sessions engaging and useful for the community.
Got ideas or topics you would love to see covered? Let us know by reaching out via Discord, X or mail!

Last but not least: wen S3?

The post ZKWS S2, The Full Journey appeared first on ZK Hack.

ZK HACK V Puzzle Competition

As usual: broken advanced cryptography protocols. Find the bug and exploit it to win the bounty!

Once again, a big shout-out to this edition’s puzzle designers Kobi Gurkan, Andrija Novakovic, Nicolas Mohnblatt, and grjte from Bain Capital Crypto for crafting and creating the lore around the puzzles for our community to solve!

The competition was fierce to make it to the top of the leaderboard, with the participants competing for speed on the 3 puzzles that were prepared…

Puzzle 1: Zeitgeist

“Everybody knows that you don’t really have to use the ZK version of SNARKs, because the proofs are so small anyway and can’t reveal much. Or do you?”
Puzzle 1: link, Puzzle 1 solution & write-up: link.

This puzzle explored a clever vulnerability in non-zero-knowledge SNARKs. The core issue was that when multiple proofs are generated using the same secret but different nonces, information about the secret can be leaked through the proof structure.

Specifically, the puzzle demonstrated that in a PLONK-based proof system, if proper randomization isn’t implemented (like filling the last few table rows with random values), the advice columns in the proofs contain polynomial evaluations that can be used to reconstruct the secret through Lagrange interpolation. The vulnerability arises because:

• The same secret gets placed in the same cell in the PLONK table across different proofs
• This leads to the same polynomial being used to encode that column’s values
• By collecting enough proofs, an attacker can gather sufficient evaluations of this polynomial to reconstruct it and extract the secret

This puzzle effectively highlighted why the “zero-knowledge” property in ZK-SNARKs is crucial for privacy, even though the proofs themselves are small. Without proper randomization, even compressed proofs can leak sensitive information.

* Nico recently published an article about this if you want to dive in > Chosen-Instance Attack.

Puzzle 2: Don’t Look Up

“Small fields have been all the rage for increasing performance on SNARKs. We should use them everywhere, also in lookup arguments! Or should we?”
Puzzle 2: link, Puzzle 2 solution & write-up: link.

This puzzle demonstrated a critical vulnerability in implementing lookup arguments with small finite fields. The challenge presented a LogUp/ProtoStar-based protocol for range-checking values between 0 and 63, but used a small prime field.

The vulnerability arose because when witness elements are repeated exactly p times (where p is the field’s characteristic), they sum to zero in the protocol’s equations. This allowed proving that numbers outside the valid range were valid, completely breaking the range check.

The puzzle highlighted why using small characteristic fields with lookup arguments can be dangerous, even though they might seem appealing for performance reasons.

* Ulrich Haböck and Liam Eagen just published a tweak to avoid this exact bug > Bypassing the characteristic bound in logUp.

Puzzle 3: Shadow

“It’s a wonderful era of ZK where we can use it for flexible and safe authentication mechanisms. Or can we?”
Puzzle 3: link, Puzzle 3 solution & write-up: link.

A bit of a twist for this one, this time written in Noir!

This puzzle demonstrated a flaw in an authentication system that let users prove their identity without private keys, using a combination of their public key and a “pepper” value.

The system checks two things separately: that the hash of the user’s identifier is whitelisted, and that the specified public key appears in the identifier (the identifier is composed of the public key and the pepper). The attacker exploits this by crafting an identifier where the first part contains their valid credentials (generating an accepted hash), while the target’s public key is tucked away at the end – allowing the attacker to impersonate the target.

It showed that when the size of the array containing the data is greater than the length of the data being used, it’s a security flaw to assume that the rest of the array is empty. Engineers must either explicitly exclude these extra array indices every time the data is used or enforce that the rest of the array is correctly padded with zeros.

ZK Hack V Winners:

We were so thrilled to see lots of new faces in the leaderboard, with a new record of 62 participants, and with so many of you finishing all 3 puzzles (you all earned a reward for completing this)!

At the top, the leaderboard spots kept switching and the top 4 finished within 15 (!) points of each other. Puzzle V-3 for instance saw only 53 seconds between the first and second submission! What a tight leaderboard, and with a first time Grand Winner!

Congratulations to everyone! Limited Edition ZK Hack V T-shirts, Limited Edition ‘ZK’ Ledger Hardware Wallets, tickets to the upcoming zkSummit 13 in Toronto, and over $15k in cash prizes were distributed to all the puzzle winners. A special shoutout to this edition’s winners—well done!

***
ZK Hack V Grand Winner: bkomuves
ZK Hack V 2nd place: Rumata888
ZK Hack V 3rd place: niooss-ledger
***

View the full leaderboard .

We will be organizing interview sessions for the Top 3. We want to hear their take on approaching the puzzles, solving them across topics and languages, and more. If you have questions you’d like us to ask them, write them in the zk-hack-v channel on Discord for us!

Stay tuned and subscribe to the ZK Hack YouTube channel to get notified!

ZK Hack V Workshops

4 weeks = 4 workshops for this edition of ZK Hack Online!

We’d like to thank our workshop partners Polygon, zkVerify and Nebra for their help in making this event possible, and for the great guests that joined in to host this edition’s workshops.

Session #1 Kickoff

Chat – Real World ZK Hacks with Anna Rose & David Wong – watch on YouTube
Anna Rose was joined by David Wong from zkSecurity to chat about David’s journey into ZK and various topics related to auditing zk-circuits, zk-DSLs or zk-VMs: the mindset, common pitfalls, new tools like formal verification or fuzzers, etc. As David answered the questions from Anna and from the ZK Hack V audience, the discussion shed some light on the key concepts encountered in ZK auditing.

Session #2 w/ zkVerify

Workshop – Integrating zkVerify into your dApp – watch on YouTube
Daniele Di Benedetto, Steve Rushby and Luca Giussani from zkVerify joined us to dive into the details of what zkVerify does and how to use it. 
Daniele started by giving some background context for the idea behind zkVerify, as well as a technical overview. Steve then demonstrated how the zkVerify chain can be used for web2 apps generating/verifying zk-proofs, before Luca showed how it can be integrated for web3 dApps living on different chains.
At last, Daniele closed the workshop by saying a few words about future steps and what’s next for zkVerify.

Session #3 w/ Polygon

Workshop – Range Checks Using Polygon Plonky3 – watch on YouTube
What is Plonky3, and how can you use it? Brian Seong from Polygon looked into concrete examples to answer these questions in his workshop.
After starting with some background context for Plonky3, as well as a technical overview, he then proceeded with 3 examples of Range Check implementations:

• the Mersenne31 Range Check,
• BabyBear Range Check “basic” implementation, and
• an optimized BabyBear Range Check with Constraint Degree Comparison

Links to the GitHub repos presented by Brian during the workshop:

• Plonky3 main repo
• Plonky3 Fibonacci example
• Plonky3 Range Check examples

Session #4 w/ Nebra

Workshop – Proof Singularity with Nebra – watch on YouTube
Nebra co-founder Shumo Chu, explored the intricacies of Nebra, explaining its purpose and how to use it.
He began by providing some background on the concept behind Nebra, followed by a technical overview through a deep dive into its documentation.
Finally, he introduced a new zk-app example called Proof.fun and discussed how developers and cryptographers can get involved with Nebra as well.

ZK HACK V Job Fair & Afterparty

ZK Hack V participants were invited to join our online Job Fair, hosted on gather.town, a virtual space platform where the attendees were able to interact with each other in real-time. They got to meet with our sponsors’ teams and chat about ZK, what it’s like to work in ZK and discuss job openings published on the Zero Knowledge Podcast’s ZK Jobs Board.

A few hours in, the Job Fair gave way to some lively one-on-one chats happening all around, while a poker game had kicked off at the top of the map.

Closing words

Well, that’s a wrap on ZK Hack V, which was our last event of 2024!

A big shoutout to our fantastic partners – Workshop Partners Polygon, zkVerify and Nebra, Community Sponsors Xion, zkPass, powdr, and Fermah, as well as Media Partner Zero Knowledge Podcast, to our Puzzle designers Kobi Gurkan, Andrija Novakovic, Nicolas Mohnblatt, and grjte from Bain Capital Crypto, and lastly, to our incredible cryptographers that battled on this edition’s puzzles.

We hope you had a blast, and we can’t wait to see you at the next one!

To stay up to date with ZK Hack, follow our X/Twitter account @__zkhack__, and get involved with the community by joining the ZK Hack Discord!

The post ZK Hack V Online appeared first on ZK Hack.

The event was truly one like no other! On one side, we for the first time connected with the North American (and especially the Canadian) ZK community! We had an amazing group of hackers join us in building the next generation of ZK applications and implementations. Our partner RISC Zero hosted a weeklong hacker house around our event further connecting the members of the community as well.

On the other hand, the event had a couple hiccups! Like the hurricane that hit Montréal on our first day, knocking the power out just after we kicked off the event. The power never came back on, so we needed to switch locations on Saturday morning. Luckily after the switch, the event continued on without a hitch and we rounded out the weekend inspired and excited about the state of the ZK ecosystem and the amazing ideas that the hackers shared with us! 

Day 1: Setting the Stage

On Friday, right after lunch, we opened the doors to the amazing venue that was the Rialto Theater, a designated National Historic Site of Canada built in the 1920s on Park Avenue in the vibrant Mile End neighborhood of Montréal.

Intro

In an ongoing effort to share, educate and promote the world of Zero Knowledge, this edition’s opening day was for the first time open to the public, bringing more people from the local dev community and beyond to meet with the ZK community.

We began with a presentation from the ZK Hack team introducing ZK, showing how the ecosystem has grown over time and explaining the languages and tools for hackers to use during the weekend. 

Workshops

In the afternoon, our Top Sponsors RISC Zero and Polygon, conducted workshops to familiarize hackers with their tools and technologies.

Kickoff

Time had come for the official ZK Hack Montréal Kickoff, where the ZK Hack team outlined the weekend’s schedule and all important information (prizes!), and where sponsors took the stage to introduce their bounties and what they were hoping to see built or implemented by the participants.

All the recordings of ZK Hack Montréal presentations are available on ZK Hack’s playlist on Zero Knowledge Youtube channel.

Evening

While inside, we had spent the day learning and brainstorming ZK ideas, outside, Montréal was being hit by the post-tropical storm Debby. The downpour flooded homes and roads across the province, while knocking out power for more than 500,000 homes at the peak of outages. The greater Montreal area received an accumulation of 150 millimeters in 24 hours, far exceeding the average rainfall for the entire month of August – 94 millimeters – (Environment and Climate Change Canada).

The Theater was not spared and we lost power right around dinner time, turning our meal break into one of these “Dining in the Dark” experiences – a new way for everyone to discover the local poutine!

This did not deter the hacker’s mood much, and many jumped straight in and started hacking in the dark until we closed!

Day 2: Re-setting the Stage

Day 2 started with the news that the Rialto theater was still without power. But luckily we found another space available for us to relocate our entire hackathon and all our hackers 4.5 kilometers from the Rialto Theater to the St James Theater downtown – no small feat! This new venue, the former headquarters of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (!), with 70 feet high stone walls, marble & wood floors and a suspended stained-glass dome, complete with the original safes in place, made it a memorable hacker room!

All of Saturday (and early Sunday morning) was time for hacking, with Office Hours throughout the day for participants to meet the engineering teams from our Top Sponsors RISC Zero and Polygon, as well as Based Sponsors Gevulot, Novanet and o1Labs.

Throughout the day, we interacted with participants, noting the impressive quality and variety of projects shaping up for Sunday submissions. Here are some notable projects that would later contend for the top prizes:

– zk blackjack: Andrew worked on a decentralized rollup solution for better on-chain blackjack experience (by introducing a user’s ephemeral keys that can be used only for a current game, and becomes invalid afterwards).

– ZKompose: Kai, Arvini and Arian created a proof-of-concept dApp (on-chain Fantasy football) that allows IPFS content to be composed into new derivatives that are produced in a verifiably correct context.

– Provable Multiparty Delay Encryption: John and Owen tried multiple different proving systems with unique approaches to efficiently implement an exponent range proof check. A definite Chewing Glass contender!

And also:

– zgate: Thomas worked on gated access to Telegram group chats using ZK proofs, removing the need for a trusted party.

– NTBNTS: Eli worked on generating proof of winning in a NTBNTS (not too big not too small) game.

– zkAds: Valentin and Antoine built a platform that uses ZK proofs to protect user data while enabling advertisers to target relevant users.

Hacking continued well into the night …

Day 3: Last Push

Day 3 of the hackathon started filled with determination as participants who had stayed overnight, along with those who managed to get a bit of rest, gathered back at the venue for a final push. Fueled by a healthy vegan and gluten-free breakfast courtesy of lu & i bakery, everyone was ready to continue hacking until project delivery at noon. The atmosphere was charged with energy as 25 projects were completed, showcasing the dedication and creativity of all the teams.

After a brief lunch break, judging began. Our team of 15 all-star judges, split into 4 groups, spent the next few hours reviewing the projects and then agreeing after much debate on a Top 3, a Chewing Glass award for the best technical project, and a shortlist for participants to vote for the Hackers’ Choice.

The sponsors also spent the afternoon judging their respective bounty tracks, engaging with the various projects who were eligible to their own criteria.

Closing Ceremony

By 16:00, everyone was ready for the closing ceremony. We had the Top and Based Sponsors join us on stage to give out their prizes before we announced our Chewing Glass, Hackers’ Choice and Top 3 winners of ZK Hack Montréal. About 50K$ in prizes were awarded to the hackers that day!

The winners had the opportunity to present their work to the audience, showcasing the details of their projects and the impressive results of their efforts.

ZK Hack Montréal Winners

And here are the winners…

– The Hackers’ Choice Prize went to Pictionary Proof: Jaskirat and LN developed a multiplayer drawing game with a provably fair and privacy-respecting scoring mechanism using zero-knowledge machine learning (zkML). The game involves players drawing based on a secret category, with their submissions scored by a neural network and verified through a zkVM

– Two teams tied for the Chewing Glass Prize:

– sparta(0): Simon and John implemented SuperSpartan, a Polynomial Interactive Oracle Proof (IOP) for the Customized Constraint System (CCS), written in Rust. SuperSpartan leverages the sum-check algorithm to efficiently prove that a CCS relation holds, offering flexibility (R1CS, Plonkish, AIR), and serving as a foundational component for more complex recursive proof systems; and 

– Plonky3Sum: Syed implemented a proof system for the correct aggregation of public keys using twisted Edwards coordinates in Plonky3. This method reduces verification costs by directly using public keys on twisted Edwards curves, such as the Bandersnatch curve, without conversion. The project has critical applications in blockchain consensus proofs for resource-restricted actors, anonymous verifiable voting, and anonymous leader election.

– 3rd Prize went to Zalileo: Théo, Koen, Rémi & Yofi addressed the issue of GPS spoofing, which undermines the reliability of existing Proof of Location protocols. By leveraging Galileo’s OS-NMA technology, which signs navigational messages using ECDSA, they were able to ensure the authenticity of location data, reducing the risk of GPS manipulation.

– 2nd Prize went to DrinKZ: Harry & Non-Econ aimed to establish trust in real-life IoT data, starting with scenarios like DUI accusations, by enabling verifiable and privacy-respecting data ownership. By integrating Apple’s App Attest service with zkVM, the project ensures that data collected from analog sensors on IoT devices, such as breathalyzers connected to an iOS app, is both authentic and securely attributed to the device owner, addressing the oracle problem for real-world sensing data.

– and the ZK Hack Montréal 1st Prize went to Lemma: Jakub, Kit & Eric built a project that innovatively applies ZK technology to mathematics by creating a decentralized platform where users can post unsolved theorems with accompanying bounties. Valid mathematical proofs are verified on-chain using ZK proofs, enabling trustless bounty distribution, which could accelerate mathematical discoveries by bridging advanced mathematics and blockchain.

Congratulations to the winners of this edition, and to all the participants!

Lessons Learned / What’s Next

The projects that came out of this edition showcased the versatility and potential of ZK proofs in enhancing privacy in various applications, as well as solving real-world problems, exploring insanely creative new use cases like ZK breathalyzers, ZK & GPS and many more! 

And just like that, ZK Hack Montréal came to an end. It was an incredible experience made possible by the amazing ZK Hack team. We had never expected a mid-event venue switch, and all the challenges that the venue and weather threw at us, but the team managed it with speed, professionalism and with good humor throughout. It definitely made for a truly unforgettable event!

A big shoutout to our fantastic partners – Top Sponsors RISC Zero and Polygon, as well as our Based Sponsors Gevulot, Novanet and o1Labs. We’re also grateful to our Prize Sponsor ZKV, our Community Sponsors Pluto, Aligned, zkVerify, Fenbushi Capital, Lambda Class, 1kx, Aztec and Celestia, to our judges, that did an incredible job reviewing all the fantastic projects submitted by the participants, to our Platform partner Devfolio for supporting the hackers all week-end, and to the crew at the venue.

Lastly, a big big thank you to all the participants, we can’t wait to see you at the next one!

For the latest updates and more, follow us on X/Twitter, and also make sure to pop into our Discord to join the ZK conversation!

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Day 1: Setting the Stage

Our schedule mirrored the successful format from Istanbul, with an introduction to ZK as a starter. We began with an overview of the ZK landscape, for those less familiar with the industry, to highlight the various categories of companies and technologies. It was also a good moment for us to say a word about the unique approach required for this ZK-focused hackathon, which is more technical than other web2 or even web3 hackathons. In this event, hackers were encouraged to build either ZK applications or ZK core infra.

In the afternoon, our Top Sponsors, Aleph Zero and o1Labs/Mina, conducted workshops to familiarize hackers with their tools and technologies. Following these sessions, we hosted ZK Hack Kraków official kick-off, outlining the weekend’s schedule and all important info, such as bounties and prizes… This edition set a new record with a total amount over $100K! After a tasty dinner, it was finally time for the real hacking to begin. 

Day 2: Hacking and Creativity

Saturday was a full day (and night) of hacking, with Office Hours hosted by our Top Sponsors, Aleph Zero and o1Labs/Mina, as well as by our Based Sponsors: Nethermind Research, Gevulot, Hylé, Avail, Polygon, and zkLighter.

The afternoon also featured our now-traditional creative workshop, where hackers took a break to design their own T-shirts and tote bags… sometimes very zk-inspired!

Throughout the day, we interacted with participants, noting the impressive quality of projects shaping up for Sunday submissions. Some notable projects, which would later make Honorable Mentions, included:

• GevuRisc: Andrzej gave a shot at integrating RISC Zero prover/verifier into Gevulot’s decentralized proving layer

• Hackstir: Marton and Shuang worked on a Goland / Gnark implementation of the paper STIR: Reed–Solomon Proximity Testing with Fewer Queries 

• Gitcoin Passport: Pawel focused on the portability of a Gitcoin Passport score in a privacy-preserving way

• Who’s Rugging Who?: Miezko and Mork built a revisited version of the game Mafia, also known as Werewolf

• zkPeer: Ushana, Rute and Monika created a prototype for a zk-based DeSci platform enabling anonymous scientific journal publishing and reviewing

• Clarity: Pia, Marcello, Bartosz and Cody developed a tool to look up the source code of a circuit from its identifier (such as the hash of a Cairo program)

• iocz: Kyrre took a stab at FHE and tried to express detection queries on encrypted data using backend-agnostic APIs

• Cluesum: Rob, Sergey and Syed implemented an aggregation scheme for vanilla BLS signatures with silent setup

• n0tte: Francesco and Giacomo tackled the problem of privacy for on-chain inference by using FHE on a one-layer MLP network 

Day 3: The Final Push

By Sunday morning, with some participants showing red eyes from a sleepless night of hacking, the air was getting thinner as we were approaching the fateful hour… The project submission deadline was noon, and as the number kept going up in the last minutes, we were eventually thrilled to see 40 projects submitted – an excellent number reflecting the event’s success!

After a brief lunch break, judging began. Our team of 16 all-star judges, split into 4 groups, spent 2.5 hours reviewing the projects and then agreeing on a Top 3, a Chewing Glass award for the best technical project, and a shortlist for participants to vote for the Hackers’ Choice. And here are the winners…

• Chewing Glass Prize went to Air Fried Gyatt: Philippe and Josef created a new backend for the zk-DSL Noir powered by STARKs (Plonky3), thus giving an alternative to Barretenberg but also showcasing the steps how to build a Noir backend

• Hackers Choice Prize went to CornHub: Théo and Michael built a privacy-preserving age verification process using passport scan and zk-proofs to ensure that only adults can access their corn connoisseurs website called CornHub

• 3rd Prize went to chip0: Ayush worked on a PoC implementation of the CHIP-8 instruction set using STARKs – essentially putting together a zkVM by himself in 2 days using Plonky3! – in which he was able to prove a playing of the Snake game

• 2nd Prize went to Private UTXO Discovery: Chee and Kai dived into Private Information Retrieval (PIR) and oblivious transfers to come up with a new data structure and a protocol allowing discovery of UTXO without requiring users to sync the app from scratch

• 1st Prize went to Gemstones Builders: Dawid and Jakub developed a Factorio-like game powered by zk to allow for secret strategies; but they build the ecosystem around it too, since the items produced in-game are effectively ERC20 tokens which can be traded freely

Closing Ceremony

Our sponsors also spent the afternoon judging their respective bounty tracks, engaging with the various projects who were eligible to their own criteria.

By 4:30 PM, we were ready for the closing ceremony. This time, we had the opportunity for winners to present their work to the audience, showcasing the details of their projects and the impressive results of their efforts. 

As the hackathon was reaching its conclusion, it was then time for an afterparty exclusively sponsored by Aleph Zero at the Utopia bar next door, featuring the Vodka Factory Museum of the venue! A perfect way to say goodbye after 3 days full of emotions, hardwork and ZK.

We are incredibly grateful to our team, our volunteers, the participants and the sponsors for making ZK Hack Kraków a resounding success. We look forward to seeing you at our next event, ZK Hack Montréal, from August 9th to August 11th.

Thank you & à bientôt in Canada!

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As Puzzle Partners, the Geometry Research team concocted a series of 3 cryptographic puzzles for our community of cryptography enthusiasts to solve. The rewards? Fame and glory, of course, but also fantastic prizes in collaboration with ZKV, our Prize Partner.

Besides the puzzle competition, ZK Hack IV also hosted weekly sessions with the participation of our other Workshop Partners, RISC Zero and Polygon. The recordings of these sessions are all available on the Youtube channel of our Media Partner, Zero Knowledge FM. And we ended with a bang, hosting a discussion panel with all-star speakers followed by an online ZK job fair!

In this article we will look back at these four weeks, spanning from January 16th to February 6th – here’s what happened and how.

ZK Hack IV was not a hackathon

Session #1 with Geometry Research (link)

ZK Jargon Decoder

In our initial online session, Nico Mohnblatt from Geometry Research introduced the ZK Jargon Decoder, addressing common challenges faced by newcomers in the ZK space: the complex terminology and its inconsistent use. Originally a personal tool, the ZK Jargon Decoder is now available online and offers informal explanations of ZK terms in “normal” English.

Nico and Anna during the ZK Jargon Decoder session

Before delving into the Decoder, Nico, also a co-host of Anna’s Zero Knowledge Podcast, briefly introduced Geometry Research – the same research team some people might have known from Geometry but now collaborating independently, and still working on cryptography protocols and security analysis.

Anna and Nico then covered basic ZK concepts and addressed numerous questions from the ZK Hack IV audience, ranging from NTT vs FFTs to polynomial IOP or soundness. This provided our attendees, with varying expertise, insights into cryptographic algorithms and led to lively interactions, definitely putting ZK Hack IV on the right track!

Nico’s chart of security properties (with some of the commons acronyms)

Session #2 with RISC Zero (link)

Get Rusty with RISC Zero: Build your ZK Rust Application

The next ZK Hack IV workshop introduced RISC Zero’s ZKVM and Bonsai, for building ZK apps in Rust. CEO Brian Retford discussed RISC Zero’s mission, emphasizing ZKVM’s versatility for various applications but also its challenges. Once again, the audience was the other main protagonist of a lively Q&A session, covering topics from ZK machine learning to ZKVM performance.

Dr. Iryna Tsimashenka then explained RISC Zero’s ZKVM architecture and proof system scalability. She also demonstrated how the quick start guide facilitates the creation of projects using the ZKVM, how to test code and more generally how to get ready to create production ready applications.In the last segment, Hans Martin discussed Bonsai’s use for privacy and security in internet logins, integrating ZK with traditional authentication for web3 applications. 

Session #3 with Polygon (link)

Provable State Changes: The Miden Transaction Kernel

In this workshop, Dominik Schmidt and Bobbin Threadbare from Polygon explored Polygon Miden, providing ZK Hack IV audience with insights into Miden VM and its Transaction Kernel. Bobbin explained Miden VM’s execution process and design using MASM language, clarifying transaction concepts within Miden’s rollup.

Dominik and Bobbin during Polygon Miden session

As usual, the engaged audience had a lot of questions for Bobbin, about topics like performance, invalid operations, or proof generation details. The resulting discussions not only shed further light on the intricacies of Miden, but also offered broader insights into its role within the overarching ZK ecosystem.

In the final part, Dominik focused on the Transaction Kernel’s role in validating state changes, detailing its design and functionality, illustrating his explanations with code snippets for clarity, and ultimately emphasizing Kernel’s importance in secure state transitions. 

Session #4 with Anna & Panelists (link)

ZK Panel: What’s it really like working in ZK?

The ZK Hack IV finale featured a panel discussion on working in ZK, moderated by Anna Rose with Nico Mohnblatt, Brian Retford, and Brendan Farmer. Each shared their journey into ZK, highlighting their diverse backgrounds and motivations. They discussed early challenges in accessing ZK resources and the steep learning curve, emphasizing perseverance and community support. Skills needed for ZK work were outlined, such as mathematical maturity and coding proficiency.

Anna, Nico, Brian and Brendan during ZK Hack IV discussion panel

The many questions (again!) from ZK Hack IV audience covered product development, education, ZK audits, or technical ZK queries. Our panelists also discussed future trends, such as smaller fields, multi-linear protocols for faster provers or integrating ZK into existing infrastructure for privacy apps (citing ZK Email and ZK Login).

Overall, the discussion underscored the growth and collaboration opportunities in ZK, a message that strongly resonates with ZK Hack mission. This was an excellent way to get ready for ZK Hack IV grand finale: the ZK Job Fair on gather.town!

ZK Job Fair 

Hosted on gather.town

Our online ZK Job Fair was an opportunity for ZK Hack IV participants to meet with our sponsors’ teams and discuss job openings published on the ZK Jobsboard… or whichever topic they liked, ZK related or not!

Walking into ZK Hack IV Job Fair on gather.town

Hosted on gather.town, a virtual space platform, the attendees were able to interact with each other in real-time, almost as if they were in the same physical location. We received great feedback from the participants on both sides (sponsors & job hunters), hopefully we will have some success stories to share in the near future!

Puzzle Competition 

Numbers, Winners, Prizes

ZK Hack IV Puzzle Competition was definitely a record edition! 

• 59 participants – crushing previous records
  (38 from the original ZK Hack in 2021, ZK Hack III in 2022 coming close with 32)
• Closest score difference for single puzzle winner
  Only 1m23s between Zellic and techiepriyansh submission times for Puzzle F1 (best in 54m53s)
• Closest score difference for overall winner
  Only 9m38s between nioss-ledger and Zellic total time spent on the puzzles (best in 2h7m12s)

The full leaderboard of all the participants can be found on ZK Hack IV website, together with all the puzzle details and results, and the workshops’ recordings.
If you want to dive more into the technical details and explanations about the puzzles created by Geometry Research, check out this great summary put together by Zellic, whose team ranked second: ZK Hack IV Puzzles Retrospective by Zellic.

Also, first time a bear presented a cryptographic puzzle (probably)

Closing words

With close to 1,500 registrations cumulated over the four online events, ZK Hack IV had a remarkable turnout as well. We want to thank all the attendees for making the online sessions so lively with their questions, all the participants to the puzzle competition, and of course ZK Hack IV partners who made it possible.

In summary – it was great! and we’re looking forward to the next ZK Hack event…

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Friday, Day 1

On Friday Nov 10th, a beautiful warm day in Istanbul, we arrived at the Feriye venue by the sea at around noon. We were there to host our 6 partner workshops, “before” the hack officially kicked off. We had learned from ZK Hack Lisbon that doing these workshops early in the weekend was better for hackers, giving them more time to focus and complete their projects.

Our first workshop was hosted by the ZK Hack team. In it, we shared an overview of the types of tools that could be used during the hackathon and the different characteristics of each zkDSL and framework. Our goal was to help participants to consider which tools they could use for the application they had in mind and how to better make that decision.

Next up, we had the Partner workshops from our top sponsors. Participants had a chance to get a deeper look into these emerging tech stacks and be introduced to the mentors who would be on site to help. After the workshops, we hosted our kick-off with the schedule and plan for the weekend, as well as the list of bounties and prizes. People then broke for dinner and hacking kicked off in earnest!

Our venue for the hackathon sadly wouldn’t let us stay overnight, so we wrapped up at 11pm for the eve.

Saturday, Day 2

We arrived at the site at 8am and slowly the hackers returned to the venue and got hacking. We as organizers were already starting to see signs that this was a bigger hack than the last. ZK Hack Lisbon had 33 projects submitted, but by day 2 of ZK Hack Istanbul we already had 58 teams registered. Of course, we wouldn’t expect everyone to finish, but it was already a promising sign.

We hosted the Q&A sessions during the day with the teams once again, giving hackers a chance to ask more questions, and then the Turkish Lamp Making workshop. Unexpectedly inspiring – we got to design our mosaic masterpieces with friends and show off some craft skills.

Saturday was also an opportunity to wander into the different rooms and chat with the teams about what they were working on. A few projects were already taking great shape, while others were still at the draft stage – but no doubt, the energy was there!

Notable projects

The Team Tab+Enter (Thomas Redfern & Saurav Dhar) had figured out the algorithms behind mental poker, which they originally ambitioned to build for their zk-game PoZKer (“Poker based on cryptography. Trust the math!”). But they also had realized already that time would fall short, and had pivoted to implement an oracle for card dealing; a smart move which would enable a cool demo the next day, despite some of the game logic being broken.

Another hack in the zk-game category was zkAargon by Team bluenote (Erhan Tezcan, Mehmet Ersoy, Umut Özçelik), a reimagination of the 1999 puzzle game Aargon featuring lasers and mirrors. In this zk-version, the players can prove a solution without revealing it, and we could tell the team was having fun working around commitments for the puzzle and inventory simultaneously, playing with an interesting game-proving logic despite the challenges.

Hamid Bateni, together with Billy Rennekamp, were hacking on eip-7503-chain, with the idea of bringing EIP7503 to the Polaris EVM. EIP7503 is a fascinating proposal introducing a unique approach to private proof-of-burn for enhanced privacy and scalability, enabling for instance contractless mixers. The team’s focus was to modify the EVM to support new transaction types and verifying circuit proofs… A daunting task they tackled with enthusiasm, although they knew they couldn’t finish in time for the hackathon’s deadline.

A solo hacker, Saurabh Chalke, was working on zscan – Etherscan for zk! The goal of this explorer for zero-knowledge is to assist developers in understanding all the info related to proofs’ generation and verification (public inputs, circuit metadata, smart contract code, constraints, etc.) by providing a friendly user interface and analytical tools for more detailed insights. Saurabh was eventually able to finalize and deploy a running prototype, which is always a challenge in a hackathon!

Yanis Meziane and Oskar T were the two members of Team rsa-aadhaar-mopro physically present at the Feriye venue, with Vivian counting as an extra half-person helping remotely on some specific parts. And they were also incidentally working on 2.5 projects all together, hence the project’s name Two and a Half ZK. Their focus was proof generation on mobile devices, leveraging on the existing library mopro. The first big chunk, pocket-aadhaar, enhances the existing anon-aadhaar system (anonymously proving valid RSA signature of Indian ID documents), optimizing proving time on mobile. The second part, pocket-kimchi, extends the Kimchi Rust proof system to mobile devices, and the last half-project deals with Circom RSA verification, required for anon-aadhaar.

And to finish this tour with an even more cryptography-heavy project, Harry Liu decided to hack in Python with an implementation of Cached Quotient Lookups he named Baby CQ Lookups – an alternative to the already existing Rust implementation.

Either one-person teams, duos or larger groups of up to 6, regardless of the number of people, the general atmosphere of the day was a subtle mix of excitement, creativity and hardworking hustle and bustle – with a pinch of rush feeling starting to emerge at dusk… This was then a good timing for another great dinner, on our ZK Hack beanbags once again! At 11pm, we cleared out the venue, with encouraging thoughts for the several hackers who were still going to be working through the night.

Sunday, Day 3

Kickstarting our last day, we saw hackers finishing off the last touches of their hackathon (some chill, some… less chill!). The deadline was 12 noon and we had members of the Devfolio team on site to help teams with submissions.

Once all the projects were in, we had our tally: 48 teams finished their projects in time, over a 50% increase from ZK Hack Lisbon. Our amazing judges had quite a feat ahead of them. How would we distill 48 projects down to the handful of winners?

We broke the judges into 5 teams of 3, and started pinging all the teams to get them setup to present their project to the judges!

For 2 hours the judges saw back to back projects. It was really challenging to dive in in such a short time, especially for those projects that were very technical. But by the end, when the judges reconvened, there were definitely some favorites that each group could put forward for the sizes.

Winners!

We had so much deliberation back and forth around the ranking of the winners though. In the end, we genuinely could not rank them, so decided instead to choose the top 5 and award them an even split of the top 5 prizes – here they are!

• DamnFair by Team DamnFair (Yolanda Ying, Mingzhe Wang and Thomas Zhang) is a multi-components solution addressing the challenge of safeguarding against Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS) scams through the use of AI and blockchain technologies. The project includes a decentralized ML task matching platform using AI algorithms for efficient task allocation, zk-proofs integration for cryptographic task verification, and an on-chain verification and payment trigger for transparent and secure transactions. Web3 mechanisms – specifically, smart contracts and tokens – are also used to incentivize contributors with cryptocurrency rewards.
• zkVM by Team Tetration Lab (Parin Chiamananthapong, Phatrasek Jirabovonvisut, Pakorn Nathong and Jern Kunpittaya) tackles the complexity of building a zero-knowledge virtual machine. Many companies are indeed building such systems, but even when their code is open-source, it is extremely hard to understand and follow, which makes it practically unusable for learning purposes. That’s the rationale behind this project, a sort of “zkVM 101” tutorial. The team chose a high-level zkDSL (Noir) to construct the zkVM circuit, and the various components (DSL, dApp, verifier smart contracts, interactive frontend) also aim to make the process easy to grasp. Two functional zkVMs within a single weekend — well done!
• Katz by Théo Madzou is a zk-voting app (and yes, users vote for their favorite cats). Using recursive proofs and on-chain settlement, Katz ensures that individual votes remain private while allowing for transparent overall election results on-chain. The resulting prototype is a complete end-to-end dApp, with a fully functional and slick user interface (and also, cats) which impressed the judges.
• AnonAbuse by Team Anon Abuse (CheeChyuan Ang, fman dev, Jinsuk Park, afk byte and sfyl) addresses the issue of hacks and thefts in the crypto space, providing a fully anonymous platform for victims to share experiences and information without compromising their privacy. The whole workflow of ensuring a verifiable link between victims and attackers is not only zk-powered but also uses zkML to prevent fake linkages, leading to an on-chain registry of addresses affected by hackers.
• =nil; chronicle by Team ZkAutochess (Arjan van Hoogdalem, Alexey Kalmykov, Franco Nieddu, Timur Bartenev and Alexandr Kolesnik) is a auto-battler game: players strategically place units on a grid-shaped battlefield during a prep phase, and battles are then autonomously executed by algorithms. In this zk-version, the players’ choices are concealed from their opponents. The game’s design aligns with the constraints of on-chain implementation, with battles executed off-chain and results submitted to smart contracts for rewards and payouts. Additionally, =nil; chronicle enables players to customize the behavior of auto-controlled units, offering advanced players the ability to modify default AI while the game engine verifies the correct execution of battles according to the chosen algorithm.

We had also announced in our opening ceremony that two other prizes would be awarded: Chewing Glass (for the best technical project) and Hackers’ Choice (voted for by the participants). Once again, deliberations for Chewing Glass were a tough task, and together with the judges we decided to split the reward in two.

• O1JS SHA256 Hash Function Circuit by Mahmoud Kaffel is a work towards optimizing the SHA256 circuit implementation for o1js SDK, by operating on 32-bit words as a single field element. Mahmoud encountered and tackled several challenges during the development process: the need for an efficient binary hash function within zk-circuits, the native binary gadgets in o1js hardcoded to operate on 64-bit field elements, limitations in the rotate, shift and rangeCheck functions… The way he exhaustively articulated the issues while proceeding with debugging gives invaluable insight to O1Labs team.
• Hello, HyperCube by Team Meiosis (Kai Jun Eer, Even Lu and Yu Guo) aims to break down the complexity of zkSNARKs by implementing cryptographic primitives that reduce a complex multivariate polynomial circuit into a more manageable univariate polynomial – a process referred to as “univarization”. The name “Hello, HyperCube” actually stems from the representation of a multilinear polynomial as points on a Boolean hypercube and its subsequent reduction through evaluations on its partial sum using sumcheck. The team implemented two univarization methods, Logup+ and Gemini (with a third method, ZeroMorph, planned for future implementation and benchmarking), and they did so by efficiently splitting tasks, with each member contributing to different parts of the implementation of these low-level cryptographic primitives.

As part of the judging process, we had identified a large pool of other high quality projects from which all ZK Hack participants could vote to elect the Hackers’ Choice. This time, the selection was actually rather clear, and KZG CEX Solvency by Pierre Daix-Moreux and Enrico Bottazzi emerged as the winner. The project is an arkworks implementation of the protocol proposed in Having a Safe CEX: Proof of Solvency and Beyond, co-authored by Vitalik Buterin. As explained by the team, the whole concept can be summed up as a transition from a stance of “don’t do evil” to “can’t do evil”, in order to instill greater trust in CEX’ financial integrity, with users able to verify the inclusion of their deposits in the CEX balance sheet. Hopefully this implementation of Vitalik’s protocol in arkworks can potentially catalyze further research in this space.

While this wrapped up the winners on that day, there was in fact more! Hackers’ Choice, Round #2, was made possible thanks to the Quadratic Voting matching pool feature enabled by our platform partner, Devfolio – read more about it here. Up until 72 hours after the hackathon finished, participants were able to vote for as many projects as they liked, as much as they liked (with 100 votes to distribute however they wanted). And at this fun little game, the first place ended up being Circom Monolith by Ayush Shukla, an implementation of the Monolith hash function on the Goldilocks field using Circom zk-DSL.

Keep in mind that these prizes were not the only ones awarded during the hackathon – meanwhile our partners were busy judging their bounty prizes as well, and had made the selections (you can find them all here in our megathread on the winners).

To wrap up the day, we had our results announcement and closing ceremony: Even with the decisions made, we were running late and people were ready to head to their next events at Devconnect. So sadly, we weren’t able to have the winners present this time – something we normally would really like to do. It was instead a bit of a mad dash to get the final slides from partners and ours all updated with winners.
In our closing we invited the partners to the stage to share their bounty winners and then introduced the overall 5 winners, the Chewing Glass prizes and the Hackers’ Choice winners. As well we shared our honorable mentions, just a wider sample of great projects that had been built in the weekend (hint: these are the ones we described in our Saturday chapter).

And just like that, ZK Hack Istanbul was over… We had an amazing time, and all of this was made possible by the team: Anna, Agni, Natalia, Hanna, Rachel, Kobi, Flying Nobita, Gaylord and Thor. As well as our amazing Partners Polygon, Aleo, O1Labs, Ola, and RISC Zero. Huge thanks to our Based Sponsor LambdaClass, ;nil= Foundation, and ZKValidator and to our Community Sponsors Aztec, Ethereum’s Ecosystem Support Program, Fenbushi Capital, Inversed Tech, Mantle, Scroll, Snarkify, Starkware, Taiko, and Wormhole – as well as our Platform partner, Devfolio (thanks for supporting the hackers on Sunday morning!).
Our judges did an incredible job, because of (or rather, thanks to) all the great projects submitted by the participants: kudos to them!

At last, thanks to the crew at the venue – it was a pleasure to work together.

And to all the participants: we can’t wait to see you at the next one!

The post ZK Hack Istanbul appeared first on ZK Hack.

The event served as an incredible platform for hackers and builders to connect, collaborate, and learn from the leading teams in the ZK space. With a jam-packed schedule that included everything from workshops to team formations and of course some good old hacking; ZK Hack Lisbon was an unequivocal celebration of ZK technology and its potential to transform our digital world.

The evening of March 31st kicked off the event with an opening ceremony that set the stage for the exciting days ahead. The participants formed teams and dived right into an intro to zk circuit programming workshop, setting the tone for the intense hacking sessions that were to follow.

April 1st was a day full of enlightening workshops. The day started off with a tutorial on ‘Creating Zero-Knowledge Proofs with RISC Zero’, which shed light on the fascinating world of RISC Zero and its role in zk proofs. Next, ‘zkConnect: The Cryptonative SSO?’ by Sismo took centre stage, exploring the potential of zk technology in creating a Single Sign-On (SSO) for the crypto space.

The afternoon session was kicked off by a workshop on ‘Hacking on Polygon’s Zero Knowledge Virtual Machines’, offering insights into the intricacies of Polygon’s zkVMs. The day continued with a session on ‘Privacy on Polkadot via XCM’ by Moonbeam, followed by ‘Pragmatic Privacy with Liminal’ by Aleph Zero, each adding a different facet to the understanding of privacy in the blockchain space. 

Finally, April 2nd was the culmination of all the hard work and innovation, with the submission of the hacks and the judging process. While every submission was a testament to the incredible talent and potential in the zk space, the winning solutions stood out for their innovation, practicality, and potential impact on real-world applications of ZK technology. 

1st Place: ZeroGravity

@drCathieSo_eth, @SecuritaAegis, @georgwiese, @benwilson_ml, @VicSintNic, @unzvfu – 

ZeroGravity, a weightless neural network architecture to reduce the proving of inference to lookup arguments on a highly optimised Bloom filter implementation.

ZeroGravity addresses the inherent complexities of expressing popular neural network architectures as arithmetic circuits for zero-knowledge proofs. Capitalising on previous advancements in Weightless Neural Networks (WNNs) and lookup arguments, ZeroGravity streamlines the proof of neural network training and inference. The project uniquely employs an optimised Bloom filter for inference via table lookups, replacing traditional floating-point arithmetic. In practical terms, this technology enables users to confidentially verify that their biometric data, processed through an ML model, is not blacklisted, thereby bolstering the integrity of data provenance in ML-based medical scans.

2nd Place: ZKP2P

 @0xSachinK, @Bmwball56, @richardzliang,

A trustless P2P USD <-> USDC fiat onramp powered by ZK proofs and Venmo

ZKP2P is aimed at simplifying the process of onboarding and offboarding funds in the web3 space. It addresses key challenges faced by new users, such as high fees charged by centralised exchanges, and limitations experienced by crypto natives who want to offboard funds into the real world. ZKP2P leverages Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) of email DKIM signatures to facilitate on-chain trading of USDC for USD with a Venmo user, offering a decentralised solution that enhances accessibility and reduces costs. This innovative use case is built on the ZK Email platform.

3rd Place: zkSafe 

@emilianobonassi

Enabling to use your @Safe with your web2 accounts thanks to Sismo zkConnect.

zkSafe improves account control by integrating web2 accounts like email or Twitter with your wallet. Leveraging the Gnosis Safe Module framework and Sismo zkConnect single sign-on, it provides enhanced security and convenience. Features include social recovery through your trusted network and advanced access control based on Sismo claims and levels. With zkSafe, you can manage these off-chain rules confidently, backed by the privacy-preserving assurances of zk proofs, making self-custody more resilient and flexible!

Hackers’ choice: Fruity Friends

@madztheo &  @guelowrd_

Fruity Friends intends to solve the case when two people share common interests, such as fruits they like, but are unwilling to reveal any of them unless it matches the other person’s interests.

Fruity Friends addresses the challenge of Private Set Intersections (PSI) – discovering shared interests between individuals without revealing any non-matching preferences. Essentially, it aims to identify commonalities while maintaining privacy. The primary focus is on determining if there are any shared interests (i.e., the intersection’s cardinality is greater than 0).

Honorable Mentions

1: Zero Trace: a zkSocial graph to authorise computation and storage at the edge.

2: StarkSight: Verify your World ID (ZK-SNARK), on Starknet.

3: Zero Knowledge Decision Tree Prediction (ZK-DTP)

4: ZyKloon: a solution that allows anonymous transactions between accounts that belong to the same sismo vault.

5: Sismord: a simple integration of SISMO’s zkConnect protocol which provides an off-chain verification using ZKPs that checks if you can gain access to private discord memberships.

As the event wrapped up on Sunday, it was clear that ZK Hack Lisbon was more than just a hackathon. It was a vibrant community event, a celebration of knowledge, and a testament to the potential of zk technology.

We want to extend our congratulations to all the winners and participants, who not only showed incredible talent but also contributed to the overall success of ZK Hack Lisbon. We are excited about the future of ZK and can’t wait to see how the seeds planted at this event will grow and shape the landscape of ZK technology.

Thank you to everyone who made ZK Hack Lisbon possible – our dedicated team, the inspiring participants, and our supportive community. You have truly made this event a landmark in the journey of ZK technology. We learned a lot about hosting hackathons on our first outing, and we look forward to seeing you at our next event which is slated for later this year in Istanbul! For the latest updates and more, follow us on twitter Twitter, also make sure to pop into the discord to join the conversation.

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As one of the leading platforms for ZK technology exploration and development, ZK Hack is dedicated to delivering an all-encompassing learning experience. From in-person, virtual events, and puzzle competitions, to a plethora of educational resources and study groups, we focus on the fundamental concepts and tools of ZK, striving to empower individuals and teams with an in-depth understanding of this field, and helping them embark on their ZK technology journey.

ZK Hack was born out of a 2021 survey conducted by the ZKValidator team to gauge the community’s interest in a ZK Hackathon. Despite the overwhelming response, we found that many were seeking more in-depth knowledge about zero knowledge proofs and related tools before they could confidently dive into ZK development. Potential partners also voiced that their tooling wasn’t yet in a state to be used in this way. Catering to these needs, we decided to host a virtual event that aligned with the majority’s preferences. The inaugural ZK Hack was a seven-week virtual extravaganza that encompassed a series of workshops and puzzle-solving competitions.

To cultivate a sense of belonging and facilitate connections, we have set up a dedicated Discord channel for ZK Hack. This channel has become the go-to hub for all things ZK Hack, providing updates, facilitating discussions, and keeping you informed about our events. 

In this article, we will give a brief overview of the ZK Hack ecosystem (events, learning resources, social channels, and study groups) as well as providing some tips for getting involved!

ZK Hack Events

Online Events
There have been several online ZK Hack events since that inaugural 2021 ZK Hack; most recently we hosted ZK HACK III which saw another multi-week virtual event offering the  combination of learning and competition. Participants had the opportunity to attend weekly workshops from top projects in the ZK application space such as Sismo’s workshop ‘Introduction to ZK Badges and ZK Attesters’, and others such as Aleo and Scroll. These workshops enable a deepening of participant knowledge of ZK concepts, tools, and the application space.

Additionally, ZK Hack III featured advanced puzzle solving competitions, where participants put their skills to the test and compete to find bugs in protocols for a chance to win prizes. Past puzzles can be found in the “Puzzles” section of the ZK Hack, the accompanying complete solutions are a great way for budding ZK developers to hone their craft.

In Person events
The first IRL ZK Hack took place this year in Lisbon. Hosted at the stunning Academy of Sciences of Lisbon, it was a great event that saw the coming together of a diverse collection of brilliant minds, all geared towards building  ZK tools & applications. For information about how the event unfolded; check out our recap article [here].

Considering the success of the first in-person event, ZK Hack is pleased to announce that there will be a second in person ZK Hack later this year in Istanbul. This event will take a similar format to that in Lisbon while also incorporating all of the learnings from the last. We see these live events fulfilling a real need in ZK by facilitating a space for the community, and actively promoting collaboration and innovation.

Educational & Research Initiatives

Although a lot of people know ZK Hack for the events, the community is also involved in several continuous educational and research activities:

Firstly, the website offers a wealth of information on the latest research and applications in ZK, providing a platform for connecting with experts in the decentralised web, open-source software development, cryptography-enabled privacy technology, and the general emerging web3 space. I highly recommend checking it out and hope to catch you on the discord!

Secondly, the ZK Whiteboard Sessions are an educational initiative that aims to demystify the world of zero knowledge. The series, which is produced by ZK Hack and powered by Polygon, offers a new module on zero-knowledge topics every week. The initiative aims to provide a comprehensive learning experience to anyone interested in understanding the intricacies of zero knowledge.

As these videos are highly packed with information, here are some tips to approaching your study:

1. Start with the basics: Before diving into the more complex topics, make sure you have a solid understanding of the basics of zero-knowledge proofs and protocols. This will help you build a strong foundation for the rest of the course.
2. Take notes: Take detailed notes during the sessions, and make sure to review them regularly. This will help reinforce what you’ve learned and make it easier to retain the information.
3. Practice: Try implementing the concepts you’ve learned on your own. Practice building zero-knowledge proofs and protocols to gain a deeper understanding of how they work. For this I highly recommend checking out the work done by 0xparc.
4. Stay up-to-date: Since this course offers a new module regularly, so make sure to stay up-to-date with the latest materials.
5. Explore additional resources: Look for additional resources such as books, papers, and videos that can help supplement your learning. This can provide a broader perspective on the topic and help you gain a deeper understanding.
6. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, collaborate. Find others who are also studying the same topic and collaborate with them, make friends and get stuck-in with the community!

There are ongoing study clubs organised on the ZK Hack discord which allow groups to go through ZK Whiteboard Sessions learning materials together. Stay tuned for our upcoming videos regarding this as we hope to make these study sessions more frequent and easier for newcomers!

Finally, ZK Hack also manages zkMesh, a monthly newsletter that delves into the latest advancements in decentralised privacy-enhancing technologies, privacy protocol development, and research on zero-knowledge systems. They also post updates and announcements related to ZK Hack so definitely worth following.

ZK Hack Social Channels:

Twitter @__zkhack__

First and foremost, the ZK Hack twitter is the place to stay informed about all the announcements and updates from ZK Hack. We also planning to up our game there and start using it as a platform to lift community members contributing to the space.

Discord Discord

Our Discord server is a vibrant and bustling hub for all things ZK Hack. It’s the perfect place to engage in enriching discussions, ask questions, share ideas, and connect with other ZK enthusiasts and experts. It also hosts our ongoing study clubs, making it a vital resource for anyone keen on diving deeper into ZK.

Telegram https://zeroknowledge.fm/telegram

For more immediate updates and easy communication, join us on Telegram. It’s a fast, convenient way to stay informed and get in touch with the ZK Hack community.

Youtube Youtube

On our YouTube channel, you can find recordings of our workshops, interviews, and ZK Whiteboard Sessions. It’s a treasure trove of visual content, perfect for those who learn best through watching and listening.

Blog

Our blog is where we delve deeper into a wide range of topics related to ZK. Here you can find detailed articles, expert insights, event recaps, and more. It’s a valuable resource for anyone looking to expand their knowledge and stay up-to-date on the latest developments.

Substack zkMesh Newsletter

Last but not least, ZK Hack’s Substack hosts zkMesh, our monthly newsletter covering the latest advancements in decentralised privacy-enhancing technologies, privacy protocol development, and research on zero-knowledge systems. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in the cutting-edge developments in the ZK space.

We hope to see you in discord soon!

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