zkMesh: February 2026 Recap
Welcome to ZK Mesh, a monthly human-curated newsletter covering the latest in advanced privacy-enhancing cryptography, distributed protocol development, and zero-knowledge systems research. Below we share recent research, useful articles, videos, podcasts, tweets, tools, project updates, and events in the ZK space and beyond!
** zkSummit14 will take place on 7 May 2026 in Rome. Space is limited. If you’re planning to attend or speak, please submit your application as soon as possible here.
Research
Zero-Knowledge IOPPs for Constrained Interleaved Codes | Alessandro Chiesa, Giacomo Fenzi, and Guy Weissenberg
Nudge: A Private Recommendations Engine | Alexandra Henzinger, Emma Dauterman, Henry Corrigan-Gibbs and Dan Boneh
Implementable Witness Encryption From Arithmetic Affine Determinant Programs | Lev Soukhanov, Yaroslav Rebenko, Muhammad El Gebali and Mikhail Komarov
Cyclo: Lightweight Lattice-based Folding via Partial Range Checks | Albert Garreta, Helger Lipmaa, Urmas Luhaäär and Michał Osadnik
eDAS: Extending Data Availability Sampling With Privacy and Compliance | Isobel Watkins, Nicolas Mohnblatt and Philipp Jovanovic
Bolt: Faster SNARKs From Sketched Codes | Kobi Gurkan, Andrija Novakovic and Ron D. Rothblum
Special Soundness and Binding Properties: A Framework for Tightly Secure zk-SNARKs | Erki Külaots, Helger Lipmaa, Roberto Parisella and Janno Siim
Lightning, Field-Agnostic Super-Efficient Polynomial Commitment Scheme | Wenjie Qu, Yanpei Guo and Jiaheng Zhang
UltraFold: Efficient Distributed BaseFold From Packed Interleaved Merkle Trees | Wenhao Wang and Fan Zhang
OpenAC: Open Design for Transparent and Lightweight Anonymous Credentials | Liam Eagen, Hy Ngo, Vikas Rushi, Ying Tong, Moven Tsai and Janabel Xia
A Cryptographic Framework for Proof of Personhood | Arka Rai Choudhuri, Sanjam Garg, Keewoo Lee, Hart Montgomery, Guru Vamsi Policharla and Rohit Sinha
Bitcoin PIPEs V2 | Michel Abdalla, Brent Carmer, Muhammed El Gebali, Handan Kilinc-Alper, Mikhail Komarov, Yaroslav Rebenko, Lev Soukhanov, Erkan Tairi, Elena Tatuzova and Patrick Towa
Relaxed Modular PCS From Arbitrary PCS and Applications to SNARKs for Integers | Alireza Shirzad, Sriram Sridhar, Dimitrios Papadopoulos and Charalampos Papamanthou
Hachi: Efficient Lattice-Based Multilinear Polynomial Commitments over Extension Fields | Ngoc Khanh Nguyen, George O’Rourke, Jiapeng Zhang
Neo and SuperNeo: Post-quantum Folding With Pay-per-bit Costs Over Small Fields | Wilson Nguyen and Srinath Setty
WillowFold: Secure Aggregation With a Lightweight Committee | Hossein Hafezi, Kasra Abbaszadeh, Adrià Gascón, Phillipp Schoppmann, Mariana Raykova and Benedikt Bünz
Zero-Knowledge Proof-Carrying Data From Accumulation Schemes | Tianyu Zheng, Shang Gao and Xun Liu
Verification Theatre: False Assurance in Formally Verified Cryptographic Libraries | Nadim Kobeissi
On the Complexity of Interactive Arguments | Idan Baril and Iftach Haitner
Do Androids Dream of a Dead Internet: Interactive Watermarks for Bot Detection | Brennon Brimhall, Harry Eldridge, Maurice Shih, Ian Miers and Matthew Green
Plonk Without Random Oracles | Georg Fuchsbauer and Marek Sefranek
PANCAKE: A SNARK With Plonkish Constraints, Almost-Free Additions, No Permutation Check, and a Linear-Time Prover | Yuxi Xue, Peimin Gao, Xingye Lu and Man Ho Au
Sumcheck-based zkSNARKs Are Non-Malleable | Antonio Faonio and Luigi Russo
Articles/Threads
ZK API Usage Credits: LLMs and Beyond | Davide Crapis and Vitalik Buterin
PrivateX402: Privacy-Preserving Payment Channels for Multi-Agent AI Systems | Conor McMenamin and Artem Grigor
ZAI: Shielded Stability Primitive | ColludingNode
ML-DSA: To Pre-Hash or Not to Pre-Hash | Conor Deegan
ZK History Refresher | xiamaomao
Why ZK Will Win | Shiv Shankar
Quantum Recoverable Zcash | zkDragon
Inside the SVM - sBPF JIT Security Pitfalls and Memory Leaks | Zellic
On the Large-scale online deanonymization with LLMs paper | Ian Miers
AdversIm | Succinct
Videos/Podcasts
Stateful ZK Identity with Ian Miers | Zero Knowledge Podcast
lean Ethereum Part 1: Introduction with Justin Drake | Zero Knowledge Podcast
lean Ethereum Part 2: PQ Signatures and Poseidon with Dmitry and Benedikt | Zero Knowledge Podcast
Tachyon Whiteboard Session | Arjun Khemani & zkDragon
Zero-Knowledge Technology with Jordi Baylina | CypherTalk
Proving Ethereum in Real-Time With OpenVM | Yi Sun (Axiom) | EthDenver
Inside SP1 With Tamir Hemo: Succinct’s Approach to ZK-VM Performance & Security | Veridise
Formalising FRI: A Lean Blueprint of Security | Petar Maksimovic (Nevermind) | EtheDenver
Security Blindspots Beyond L2s | Luca Donno (L2BEAT) | EthDenver
ZisK: A zkVM Foundation for Next-Gen Blockchains | Jordi Baylina (ZisK) | EthDenver
ZKPs on Bitcoin | Ying Tong, David, Volokh, Keagan | EthDenver
Compliant Cross-Chain Lending With ZK Pre-Checks | Kacper Koziol (Amish Protocol) | EthDenver
Keeper: Turning Geth Into a zkVM Guest Program | Guillaume Ballet (EF) | EthDenver
Jolt: Making Client-Side ZK into a Commodity | Andrew Tretyakov (a16z crypto) | EthDenver
Guides and Resources
Formally Verified Arguments of Knowledge | Nethermind
Chunky: Weighted PVSS and DKG for field elements | Alin Tomescu
Tools/Implementations
Ethereum Should Enshrine Private Transfers (+ Demo!) | Tom Lehman
Midnight City | Midnight
Vulnerabilities
Large-scale online deanonymization with LLMs | Simon Lermen, Daniel Paleka, Joshua Swanson, Michael Aerni, Nicholas Carlini and Florian Tramèr
Skipping Class: Algebraic Attacks exploiting weak matrices and operation modes of Poseidon2(b) | Simon-Philipp Merz and Àlex Rodríguez García
Analysis and Vulnerabilities In Zklogin | Sofia Celi, Hamed Haddadi and Kyle Den Hartog
The first two known exploits against live ZK circuits | zkSecurity
Project Updates
zERC20 Privacy Wrapper | zERC20
Zashi Is Becoming Zodl | Zodl
Ethlambda: Building a Post-quantum Ethereum Client With the Help of Shared Tooling | Lambda Class
Optimism Chooses Succinct to Bring ZK to the Superchain | Succinct
Shielded Labs: Thoughts on Polling & Governance | Shielded Labs
StarkWare integrates EY-built Nightfall privacy tech into Starknet | StarkNet
Shield Launched | Aleo
o1js Goes Native | o1Labs
Hypercube is live on mainnet | Succinct
Events/Hackathons
RWC 2026 | Taipei, Taiwan. March 9 – 11
Privacy on Ethereum MeetUp | Amsterdam, Netherlands. February 5
zkSummit 14 | Rome, Italy. May 7
Zcash Dev Summit | Rome, Italy. May 8
ETHPrague | Prague, Czech Republic May 8-10
ETHDam | Amsterdam, Netherlands. May 9 - 10
Zkproof 8 | Rome, Italy. May 9 - 10
Eurocrypt 2026 | Rome, Italy. May 10 - 14
Common S3nse | Amsterdam, Netherlands. Sept 4
Devcon India | Mumbai, India. Q4 2026
————
There you have it! Hope you liked this edition of ZK Mesh. Be sure to subscribe to get the next edition in your inbox.
Lastly, if you have something you think should be included in the next edition or suggestions for the format, tweet at us @__zkhack__ or @zeroknowledgefm!