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Zero knowledge cryptography has the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with the world. Imagine secure, cookie-free private browsing across the internet where you and you alone decide who gets your data and when. Or swift and secure digital payments via your mobile phone that don’t leave a trail of breadcrumbs back to you for advertisements you don’t want. This is a future where your important information is never stored on a server, shared with advertisers, or most importantly hacked for someone else’s benefit; in this reality, you choose what to share and what not to share, not the other way around.
Over the past few years zero-knowledge cryptography has emerged from academia into the private sector as a solution to the very real problems of privacy and scalability mentioned above. From zk-rollups for Ethereum, to mobile-first clients and infrastructure for private applications, zero-knowledge has broad application in web3 today. But the reality is that this is still a new technology with a long way to go until global adoption. And like every new technology, it takes hard work and most importantly, time, to realize the path forward.
ZPrize is supercharging this cycle. An industry wide effort to catapult zero-knowledge cryptography into the future, this competition emulates the structure and impact of the DARPA Grand Challenge - a competition that brought about what is now the commonplace technology of self-driving cars.
While in terms of software and algorithms zero-knowledge cryptography has come quite a ways in the last few years, hardware acceleration has been a direction that only a few have explored. But many people forget that the modern encryption techniques of the modern web only became practical after they were implemented natively in CPUs. This hardware acceleration doesn't necessarily mean ASICs, it also means new ways of optimizing (alone or in combination) GPUs, CPUs, FPGAs, and mobile devices for generating zero-knowledge proofs faster.
The idea of a hardware-based ZK competition was first conceived at ETHDenver in 2022 by a group of expert technologists and cryptographers led by Aleo’s Alex Pruden. This was a veritable who’s who of web3 builders: Aztec Protocol, Mina Protocol, Risc0, Supranational, Espresso Labs, zkGarage, Polygon (Hermez/Miden/Zero), Bain Capital, ZKValidator, DZK Foundation, and many more. After this initial meeting, the ZPrize quickly gained momentum throughout the weeks and months that followed.
The goals of the ZPrize competition were defined as follows:
The competition was further split into two categories, or divisions. The Open division consisted of seven prizes and focused on low-level optimizations and general "public-goods" with wide applicability and benefit to multiple protocols/proof systems. The Team category would consist of five categories defined by the individual teams specific to a given protocol/proof-system. All submissions regardless of category would be open-sourced at the end of the competition, pushing forward the industry and technology as a whole.
The competition was organized around three main objective functions, corresponding to different use cases for zero-knowledge. These were:
The competition focused on three distinct hardware platforms:
Here’s a quick rundown of what happened during the 2022 ZPrize competition.
Average Improvement Across Categories: 2.3x - 11.3x
Range of Improvement Across Categories: 5.3x
Total Competition Timeline: 7 months, from April to November 2022
Submissions: 32 submissions from competitors based in Europe, Asia and North America
Total Prize Money Awarded: $4,415,000
Without further ado, the moment you’ve been waiting for…. the winners of the annual 2022 ZPrize. Each table represents the entire winning team, rank ordered by score.
Prize Sponsor(s): Aleo, Trapdoor Tech, ZKValidator, Jump Crypto
Prize Architect: Aleo
Prize Amount: $650,000
Prize Sponsor(s): Aleo, Trapdoor Tech, ZKValidator, Jump Crypto
Prize Architect: DZK
Prize Amount: $600,000
Prize Sponsor(s): Polygon, Aleo, Jump Crypto
Prize Architect: DZK
Prize Amount: $725,000
*Note, lower score is better
Prize Sponsor(s): Aleo, Espresso Systems
Prize Architect: Espresso Systems
Prize Amount: $550,000
Prize Sponsor(s): Polkadot, Aleo, Findora, Aztec, Mina Protocol
Prize Architect: Manta Network
Prize Amount: $390,000 and 23,650 DOT tokens
Prize Architect: Polychain Capital, Anoma
Prize Amount: $410,000
(no submissions)
Prize Sponsor(s): Aleo, 0xPARC, Manta Network
Prize Architect: Polychain Capital, Panther Protocol
Prize Amount: $155,000
Prize Sponsor(s): Ocelot, Aleo, 0xPARC
Prize Architect: c-Labs
Prize Amount: $375,000
Prize Sponsor(s): Aleo
Prize Architect: Aleo
Prize Amount: 2M Aleo Credits
Prize Sponsor(s): Aleo
Prize Architect: Aleo
Prize Amount: 3M Aleo Credits
Prize Sponsor(s): Aleo
Prize Architect: Aleo
Prize Amount: 3M Aleo Credits
(no submissions)
Prize Sponsor(s): Anoma
Prize Architect: Anoma
Prize Amount: $375,000
(no submissions)
Prize Sponsor(s): Mina Protocol
Prize Architect: Mina Protocol
Prize Amount: $125,000
(no submissions)
If you check some of the entries, you'll see not all have been open-sourced yet. We'll add those to their respective repos in the ZPrize organization on Github in the coming days!
To all participants - thank you so much for being a part of the inaugural competition. Your hard work and collaborative spirit has truly pushed forward the world of ZK technology. For newcomers checking in on results and ZPrize updates - welcome! Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more news from ZPrize, including a breakdown of each of the categories, why these improvements are set to change the world, and how you can stay involved in future competitions.
