SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 15, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ZPrize, the first-ever competition with the goal of advancing the development of zero-knowledge technology, today announced the kickoff of ZPrize 2023. The event's successful launch in 2022 has fueled excitement for the future of zero-knowledge cryptography, promising further collaborative initiatives to keep advancing this essential technology for the new generations of the web.
Teams will compete to win financial rewards of up to an equity-free prize pool of $1.5 million in both U.S. dollars and tokens in a range of categories that aim to advance the development of practical and accessible ZK systems.
Submissions are judged against current technical benchmarks, with the largest rewards being paid out to those who create the most innovative improvements on existing technologies and create new systems to further the adoption of this vital technology.
ZPrize 2023 is supported by some of the biggest names in tech, including Aleo, AMD, Aztec, TrapDoor, SupraNational, Demox Labs, Ingonyama, ZKValidator, Cysic, and W3bCloud.
“Bringing together the hardware experts from web2 with ZK technology is a powerful initiative, one that will likely have a long-lasting impact,” said Anna Rose of the Zero Knowledge Podcast and ZKValidator. “It adds muscle to an already powerful cryptographic tool and will allow for efficient industry-grade ZK technology products to be deployed in the near future. This opens the door for new systems to be competitive against the incumbent systems. It will enable the emergence of a new generation of private, secure and efficient ZK-based products - products that we have been designing and building towards for many years.
The first iteration of ZPrize resulted in significant technological advancements, marking a new era of ZK cryptography, bringing together web3 innovators with flagship technology brands. The competition celebrated remarkable achievements, including:
- Substantial improvement in multiscalar multiplication on GPU and Android mobile devices makes advanced use cases like zkSNARKs more feasible.
- Groundbreaking implementation of the Poseidon zero-knowledge friendly hash function, slashing constraint count by half, thus significantly reducing the cost of generating Merkle trees inside a SNARK.
- Optimize the low-level mathematical primitives essential for zero-knowledge cryptography using both GPUs and fully-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs)
“The need for zero-knowledge technology is clearer today, more so than ever before,” commented Alex Pruden, CEO of Aleo and Co-Founder of ZPrize. “Advancing ZK and ensuring the future of this groundbreaking technology is accessible to everyone is not just a technical ambition, but a societal imperative. We are truly humbled by the collective efforts of the global community, from the innovative companies of Web 3.0 to the traditional technology sectors, all coming together for this cause. Every advancement, every open-sourced submission, speaks volumes about our shared commitment to an open and cohesive ecosystem for the next generation of the web."
Those interested in participating in ZPrize 2023 can visit the competition website at www.zprize.io.
About ZPrize
ZPrize is a competition aimed at employing private funds to accelerate the advancement of zero-knowledge prover technology essential for extending blockchain features to accommodate numerous mainstream use cases. Anyone with academic or industry experience in mathematics, cryptography, electrical engineering, hardware engineering, or optimization is encouraged to apply to help drive the next wave of blockchain innovation.
