An independent Zcash organization
Switzerland
Joined August 2022
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Introducing Epoch, Shielded Labs’ new research and engineering project focused on hardening Zcash from future threats:
AI-powered hackers
Quantum Computing risk
Adversarial governments
We plan to achieve this through formal verification of critical code and by deploying “post-everything” cryptography.
Epoch will ensure Zcash remains designed for the threats we face today and for whatever comes next. ⤵️
Bitcoin, with its 21 million coin cap, is a sustainable store of value.
Ethereum, with EIP-1559, is a sustainable medium of exchange.
Zcash is about to have both. It already has a 21 million cap, and with ZIP-235’s upcoming transaction fee burn, it becomes a sustainable medium of exchange.
Big milestone for Shielded Labs: the activation height for NU7 is being set today! The upgrade includes our first major mainnet deployment: the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM).
Like Bitcoin, Zcash faces a long-term challenge: how to sustain network security as block rewards decline. The NSM helps address that while preserving the 21 million coin cap.
ZIP-235 removes 60% of transaction fees from circulation, allowing that ZEC to be reissued as future block rewards. ZIP-237 starts that recycling around February 2031.
At current fee levels, that’s only about 210 ZEC per year. This is a modest first step, but we’re optimistic about how new use cases for the NSM could evolve over time and contribute to Zcash’s long-term security.
We’ll have a ceremony.
The most secure, most sophisticated cryptographic ceremony that’s ever been performed.
- Zooko
In a few days Zcash celebrates the 10 year anniversary of The Ceremony. Listen to the story as told by @Radiolab radiolab.org/podcast/ceremon…
11 days in: HashSmash has 400+ public AI submissions attacking SHA-256, SHA3, BLAKE3 and Poseidon.
See for yourself: HashSma.sh
Shielded Labs retweeted
Poseidon is open for business. Get smashing!
HashSma.sh
This is the variant of Poseidon used in Zcash, so we really want to see exactly how much of it can be collided! (Zcash users will be safe, regardless, btw.)
🤖 Made with AI
In order to protect an essential value, you have to constantly change.
You have to adapt to meet your users changing needs, and to meet new threats and challenges.
Meet Suyash Bagad(@BagadSuyash)
Suyash recently joined the Epoch Team at Shielded Labs as a Cryptography Engineer.
Suyash joins from Aztec, where he worked on the barretenberg cryptography library and the PLONK family of proof systems, including performance improvements for various cryptographic primitives in ZK circuits.
He holds both a BTech and MTech from IIT Bombay, where his graduate research focused on privacy-preserving proofs of reserves for Monero and MimbleWimble. He is based in Europe.
Join us in welcoming Suyash!
Shielded Labs retweeted
Worried about quantum computers? Worried about Al breaking cryptography? Join hashsma.sh and help strengthen cryptography before Al breaks cryptography!
The Epoch project was created to stay ahead of threats to crypto.
Zcash has proven this past year how quickly we address challenges with 3 upgrades happening in 6 months. Zcash defenders don’t rest, so that Zcash users can.
xitter.cf/ShieldedLabs/status/21…
Introducing Epoch, Shielded Labs’ new research and engineering project focused on hardening Zcash from future threats:
AI-powered hackers
Quantum Computing risk
Adversarial governments
We plan to achieve this through formal verification of critical code and by deploying “post-everything” cryptography.
Epoch will ensure Zcash remains designed for the threats we face today and for whatever comes next. ⤵️
A new Zcash ETF is on the horizon
The Winklevoss twins have filed for a spot zcash:native ETF, seeking a Nasdaq listing under the ticker $WINK
Meet Luke Edwards
Luke recently joined the Epoch Team at Shielded Labs as a Cryptography Engineer.
He joins from Aztec, where he worked on the cryptography engineering team from 2022 and most recently served as its technical lead, working on the protocol's cryptographic systems and bringing advanced zero-knowledge techniques into production.
Earlier in his career, he was as a systems engineer at Raytheon and a graduate researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Arizona and a BS in Mathematics from Penn State. He is based in the United States.
Join us in welcoming Luke!
Introducing HashSmash
HashSmash is a project to accelerate cryptographic research with AI, and to figure out how to keep the internet secure as attackers get stronger.
It focuses on cryptographic hash functions, because devices, networks, software, and blockchains all depend on them. Even with how critical they are, we still don't know which of today’s hash functions will hold up against future attackers, or how to make them stronger.
HashSmash is a contest where humans and AI agents work on that problem together. Four hash functions are in play, and the goal is to show which are weak and which still hold:
SHA-256
SHA3-256
Poseidon
BLAKE3
It's a co-op, PvE effort. Participants are pooling work toward a shared result for the betterment of all. If you want to learn more, visit hashsma.sh.
Announcing hashsma.sh! 𝟘 𝟙 ❒ 🔨
Strengthen cryptography with AI.
Cryptography—both current and post-quantum cryptography—depends on hashes. SHA-256? SHA-3? BLAKE3? Nobody knows if they are secure. We're going to find out!
Come help accelerate scientific research!
HashSmash is an open science-acceleration project in collaboration with @yukonresearch, @eigenlabs, @projecteleven, and @ShieldedLabs.
Meet Ulrich Haböck (@UHaboeck).
Ulrich recently joined the Epoch team at Shielded Labs as Chief Cryptographer. He is a leading expert in zero-knowledge proofs and post-quantum cryptography.
He joins from StarkWare, where he worked as a cryptographer, after earlier work as an applied cryptographer at Polygon Labs (Polygon Zero).
He is the author of logUp, the logarithmic-derivative lookup argument now used widely across the STARK ecosystem, and a co-author of the Circle STARKs paper with StarkWare’s Shahar Papini and David Levit, which introduced an efficient approach to STARKs over the Mersenne-31 field.