ZK Mesh: November 2025 Recap

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

Each month, we bring you recent research, useful articles, videos, podcasts, tweets, tools, project updates, and events. ZK Mesh is produced by ZK Hack.

Research

• OpenAC: Open Design for Transparent and Lightweight Anonymous Credentials | ZkID Team PSE

• On Proximity Gaps for Reed–Solomon Codes | Eli Ben-Sasson, Dan Carmon, Ulrich Haböck, Swastik Kopparty and Shubhangi Saraf

• On Reed–Solomon Proximity Gaps Conjectures | Elizabeth Crites and Alistair Stewart

• Optimal Proximity Gaps for Subspace-Design Codes and (Random) Reed-Solomon Codes | Rohan Goyal and Venkatesan Guruswami

• All Polynomial Generators Preserve Distance With Mutual Correlated Agreement | Sarah Bordage, Alessandro Chiesa, Ziyi Guan and Ignacio Manzur

• SALSAA – Sumcheck-Aided Lattice-based Succinct Arguments and Applications | Shuto Kuriyama, Russell W. F. Lai, Michał Osadnik and Lorenzo Tucci

• Sum-check protocol for approximate computations | Dor Bitan, Zachary DeStefano, Shafi Goldwasser, Yuval Ishai, Yael Tauman Kalai, and Justin Thaler

• A Note On Notes: Towards Scalable Anonymous Payments Via Evolving Nullifiers and Oblivious Synchronization | Sean Bowe and Ian Miers

• TensorSwitch: Nearly Optimal Polynomial Commitments From Tensor Codes | Benedikt Bünz, Giacomo Fenzi, Ron D. Rothblum and William Wang

• A Lattice-based Designated Verifier zkSNARK From Standard Assumptions | Mohammad Sadegh Ahmadi, Taraneh Eghlidos, Behzad Abdolmaleki and Ngoc Khanh Nguyen

• Vega: Low-Latency Zero-Knowledge Proofs Over Existing Credentials | Darya Kaviani and Srinath Setty

• Single-Server Private Outsourcing of zk-SNARKs | Kasra Abbaszadeh, Hossein Hafezi, Jonathan Katz and Sarah Meiklejohn

• Succinct Zero-knowledge Proofs From One-way Functions: The Blackbox Way | Eden Florentz- Konopnicki and Ron D. Rothblum

• Language-Agnostic Detection of Computation-Constraint Inconsistencies in ZKP Programs via Value Inference | Arman Kolozyan, Bram Vandenbogaerde, Janwillem Swalens, Lode Hoste, Stefanos Chaliasos and Coen De Roover

• Pairing-Based SNARGs with Two Group Elements | Gal Arnon, Jesko Dujmovic and Eylon Yogev

• Scalable Private World Computer via Root iO: Application-Agnostic iO and Our Roadmap for Making It Practical | Sora Suegami and Enrico Bottazzi

• Optical Computing of Zero-knowledge Proof With Single-pixel Imaging | Wei Huang, Shuming Jiao, Huichang Guan, Huisi Miao and Chao Wang

Articles/Threads

• Proximity Gaps: What Happened and How Does It Affect Our Snarks | zkSecurity

• Probabilistic implication in SPLAT | Brandon Kase

• Fast Block Dissemination with Immediate Guarantees | Lucas Meier

• State of Privacy in Ethereum Survey | PSE

• Ztarknet — A Starknet L2 for Zcash | abdel

• lowercase SNARKs | Justin Drake

Videos/Podcasts

• Ethproofs call #6, Proximity Gaps | EthProofs

• ZK Whiteboard Sessions Mod 7: zkID (Anonymous Credentials), w/ Ying Tong NoirCon 3 | Aztec Network

• Ethereum Privacy Stack, Buenos Aires Part 1 | Web3PrivacyNow

• Ethereum Privacy Stack, Buenos Aires Part 2 | Web3PrivacyNow

• Privacy is Existential (Featuring Peter Van Valkenburgh) | Devconnect

• EthProofs Day | Devconnect

• Zooko & Eli on Zcash, ZK, Privacy, and Scaling | Starkware

• Lattices, Folding, & Symphony with Binyi Chen | ZK Podcast

• Pratyush Mishra on Tiny Proofs, Folding, Low-Memory SNARKs and More | ZK Podcast

Guides and Resources

• A Note On Mutual Correlated Agreement for Reed-Solomon Codes | Ulrich Haböck

• Sum-check Is All You Need: An Opinionated Survey On Fast Provers In SNARK Design | Justin Thaler

• How Aztec Works | Alex Korn

• Pedersen commitments | Alin Tomescu

• Σ-phore | Alin Tomescu

• Stay in Range: Deeper Into Bulletproofs | ZK/SEC Quarterly

• Learn Sumcheck, MLE, and HyperPlonk: An Interactive Tutorial with SageMath | ZK/SEC Quarterly

Tools/Implementations

• Smart-Contract or EOA Spend Authority for Private Accounts | Adam Gagol

• Implementing Privacy Pools on EBSI for Institutional Programmable Privacy & Compliance | EugeRe

• Formally Verifying Zero-Knowledge Circuits: Introducing CertiPlonk | Nethermind

• A Cairo implementation DCAP that supports proving and onchain verification of TEE attestations | Cartridge

• Longfellow ZK | Dyne

Vulnerabilities

• On the Distribution of the Distances of Random Words | Benjamin E. Diamond, Angus Gruen

Project Updates

• Aztec Ignition Chain is live | Aztec

• S-Two Book | Starkware

• Irreducible is shutting down | Irreducible

• Proving Grounds Field Operations Now Live | Brevis

• ₿apps Campaign: Stress Testing the Citrea Ecosystem On the Road to Mainnet | Citrea

• ZisK 0.14 | ZisK

• Foundations of Private Shared State: The First Services | TACEO

• SP1 Hypercube proves 99.7% of Ethereum blocks in real time | Succinct

• Shielded Swaps in Zashi | ZCash

• Offchain Dependence = Almost Guaranteed Loss of Money | Fermah

• Miden Testnet v0.12 – What’s New for Builders | Miden

• Lagrange Labs Joins Lockheed Martin’s Supplier Ecosystem to Advance AI for Aerospace and Defense | Lagrange Labs

Workshop/Education/Internships

• Self Workshop | Self

• Getting Started with Privacy App Development on Aztec | Aztec

• Building on Zircuit A Hackathon Introduction | Zircuit

Events/Hackathons

• Theory of Cryptography Conference (TCC 2025) Aarhus, Denmark. Dec 1-5

• Asiacrypt | Melbourne, Australia. Dec 8-12

• RWC 2026 | Taipei, Taiwan. March 9–11, 2026

• zkSummit 14 | Europe tbd. May, 2026

• Eurocrypt | Rome, Italy. May 10-14, 2026

• Devcon India | Mumbai, India. Q4, 2026 ​​

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