ZK Mesh: March 2025 Recap

Welcome to ZK Mesh, a monthly newsletter covering the latest in advanced privacy-enhancing cryptography, distributed protocol development, and zero-knowledge systems research.

ZK Mesh is produced by ZK Hack.

We bring you recent research, useful articles, videos, podcasts, tweets, tools, project updates, and events. Expect a new edition every month. Be sure to share and subscribe!

Research

• MERCURY: A Multilinear Polynomial Commitment Scheme With Constant Proof Size and No Prover FFTs | Liam Eagen and Ariel Gabizon

• A Fiat-Shamir Transformation From Duplex Sponges | Alessandro Chiesa and Michele Orrù

• Designated-Verifier SNARGs With One Group Element | Gal Arnon, Jesko Dujmovic and Yuval Ishai

• Samaritan: Linear-time Prover SNARK From New Multilinear Polynomial Commitments | Chaya Ganesh, Sikhar Patranabis and Nitin Singh

• Attacking Soundness for an Optimization of the Gemini Polynomial Commitment Scheme | Lydia Garms and Michael Livesey

• SNARKs for Stateful Computations On Authenticated Data | Johannes Reinhart, Erik-Oliver Blass and Bjoern Annighoefer

• Fine-Grained Verifier NIZK and Its Applications | Shuai Han, Shengli Liu, Xiangyu Liu and Dawu Gu

• PMNS Arithmetic for Elliptic Curve Cryptography | Fangan Yssouf Dosso, Sylvain Duquesne, Nadia El Mrabet and Emma Gautier

• zkAML: Zero-knowledge Anti Money Laundering In Smart Contracts With Whitelist Approach | Donghwan Oh, Semin Han, Jihye Kim, Hyunok Oh, Jiyeal Chung, Jieun Lee, Hee-jun Yoo and Tae wan Kim

• Scalable Zero-knowledge Proofs for Non-linear Functions In Machine Learning | Meng Hao, Hanxiao Chen, Hongwei Li, Chenkai Weng, Yuan Zhang, Haomiao Yang and Tianwei Zhang

• On Extractability of the KZG Family of Polynomial Commitment Schemes | Juraj Belohorec, Pavel Dvořák, Charlotte Hoffmann, Pavel Hubáček, Kristýna Mašková and Martin Pastyřík

• VeRange: Verification-efficient Zero-knowledge Range Arguments With Transparent Setup for Blockchain Applications and More | Yue Zhou and Sid Chi-Kin Chau

• zkPyTorch: A Hierarchical Optimized Compiler for Zero-Knowledge Machine Learning | Tiancheng Xie, Tao Lu, Zhiyong Fang, Siqi Wang, Zhenfei Zhang, Yongzheng Jia, Dawn Song and Jiaheng Zhang

• Plonkify: R1CS-to-Plonk Transpiler | Pengfei Zhu

• JesseQ: Efficient Zero-Knowledge Proofs for Circuits Over Any Field | Mengling Liu, Yang Heng, Xingye Lu and Man Ho Au

• Efficient Proofs of Possession for Legacy Signatures | Anna P. Y. Woo, Alex Ozdemir, Chad Sharp, Thomas Pornin and Paul Grubbs

• Soloist: Distributed SNARKs for Rank-One Constraint System | Weihan Li, Zongyang Zhang, Yun Li, Pengfei Zhu, Cheng Hong and Jianwei Liu

Articles/Threads

• The Path to Secure and Efficient zkVMs: How to Track Progress | Justin Thaler

• Unearthing the Reality of zkTLS: A Benchmarking and Cryptanalysis Report | Primus Labs

• Machine Learning Should Be Verifiable | EZKL

• Intmax: A Scalable Payment L2 from Plasma and Validity Proofs | Privacy and Scaling Explorations (PSE)

• A Short Note on Post Quantum Verkle Explorations | CPerezz (@CPerezz19)

• RISC Zero’s ZK-VM Security: How Veridise Enabled RISC Zero to Achieve Provable & Continuous ZK Security | Veridise

• Is ZK-MPC-FHE-TEE a Real Creature? | Aztec

• Circom MPC: TL;DR and Retrospective | Privacy and Scaling Explorations (PSE)

• Privacy 2.0: PETs and the Promise of Private Shared State | Archetype

• A Technical Deep Dive into ZKP2P | ZKP2P

• Benchmarking In-browser p256 ECDSA Proving Systems | Hylé

• Tales from the Hacker House: Building an Attested Image Editor | Succinct

• Identity in the Age of AI | Zé Pedro (@zkpedrongmi)

• BitVM: Unlocking Arbitrary Computation on Bitcoin Through Circuit Abstractions | zkSecurity

• zkTLS design choices: Opacity vs Reclaim | Shivani (@0xShivani)

• Building with Bitcoin: A Survey of the Use of Its Scripting System Across Projects | Zellic

• ”ZKWS S2: The Full Journey” Thread on X | ZK Hack

Videos/Podcasts

• Learning ZK with Jeffrey from RareSkills | Zero Knowledge Podcast

• Making ZK More Human with ZK Email | Zero Knowledge Podcast

• The Founding of Zero Knowledge Systems with Austin Hill | Zero Knowledge Podcast

• Rute on Proof of Residency | Hylé

• Zcash Scalability with Sean Bowe - ZconVI | Zcash

• A Dive into VOLE-based Zero Knowledge - Xiao Wang | Privacy and Scaling Explorations (PSE)

• ZK Hack Meetup Recordings Playlist | ZK Hack

Guides and Resources

• The Cryptomat: My Perpetual Effort Aimed at Summarizing Various Concepts in Cryptography | Alin Tomescu (@alinush407)

• GKR Protocol: A Step-by-step Example | Lambda Class

• The Barrett-Montgomery Duality and a New Multi-Precision Modular Reduction Scheme With Only n^2+1 Digit Multiplications | Ingonyama

Vulnerabilities/Disclosures

• ZKarnage: Stress Testing ZK Systems Through Maximum Pain | Conner Swann (yourbuddyconner)

• Attacking Privacy Chains: At Scale & At Home | Sundial

Tools/Implementations

• Semaphore in Noir | Distributed Lab

• Agglayer Pessimistic Proof & Benchmark in zkVMs | Brian Seong (@BrianSeong99)

• libZK: A Zero-knowledge Proof Library | Google

Project Updates

• Any Computation is Verifiable With Cheap On-Chain Folding Verifiers | NovaNet

• Rarimo Launches ZK Roll-up | Rarimo

• Announcing DeepProve: zkML to Keep AI in Check | Lagrange

• The Pi Squared White Paper | Pi Squared

• Introducing clean, a formal verification DSL for zk circuits in Lean4 | zkSecurity

• Client Side Proving and Verification with Valida | Lita

• OP Kailua to turn an OP chain into a ZK Rollup | RISC Zero

• Case Study: Accelerating Zircuit’s Zero-Knowledge Proofs with ICICLE | Ingonyama

• ICICLE-Snark: The Fastest Groth16 Implementation In the World | Ingonyama

• Nexus Runtime: ZK State Verification Powering Interoperability | Avail

• Scroll Roadmap 2025: Security, Scaling, and Better UX | Scroll

• LLZK: A new Intermediate Representation (IR) for ZK languages | Veridise

• zkVerify: Optimizing ZK Proof Verification At Scale | Delphi Digital

• Matter Labs Uses Lagrange to Decentralize Proving Across the Elastic Chain | Lagrange

• Introducing Sindri Explorer: The Hugging Face of ZK Apps | Sindri

• The Leo programming language: fast, safe and worth the await! 🦁 | Aleo

Events/Hackathons

• ZK Hack Meetup #11 | Taipei, Taiwan. April 1, 2025

• ETHGlobal Taipei | Taipei, Taiwan. April 4 - 6, 2025

• BUIDL Asia | Seoul, South Korea. April 15 - 16, 2025

• Invisible Garden | Costa Rica. April 21 - May 31, 2025

• zkSummit13 | Toronto. May 12, 2025

• ETHGlobal Prague | Prague, Czech Republic. May 30 - June 1, 2025

• DappCon 25 | Berlin, Germany. June 16 - 18, 2025

• ZK Hack Berlin | Berlin, Germany. June 20 - 22, 2025

• ETHCC | Cannes, France. June 30 - July 3, 2025

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Lastly, if you have something you think should be included in the next edition or suggestions for the format, tweet at us @__zkhack__!