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June 27 2025

The extra-protocol path is being vindicated in a big way
I was wrong about enshrined zkEVM, but I didn’t expect real-time proving to happen so quickly, clearly not learning from how in 2020 we all underestimated how general-compute in ZK became practical very quickly.

May 23 2025

The first issue of Electisec’s quarterly updates!
We looked at the (huge) backlog of DM’s and the vast majority is asking for updates on the next fellowships, so we made a newsletter for that and more!

May 20 2025

Learn&Share on BitGC protocol
Enjoyed discussions with the excellent Nakul which culminated in our organizing of this L&S on breakthrough in MPC comm breakthrough (with caveats on the public input size, which could be improved (p.7))

May 15 2025

Electisec: the big-brain factory
It’s incredible looking back where we started and how far we have come.

Apr 30 2025

Thinking MPC into MCP
I have been excited about MPC for sometime and enjoying working with the excellent MPC lead dev (Andrew) at PSE

Jan 15 2025

The unstoppable train is now Electisec
The rebrand doesn’t even reveal some stuff we’re cooking in the back kitchen, gonna be gud.

Dec 20 2024

PSE-Halo2 into Maintenance
The team has accomplished so much: swapping of the IPA backend with KZG to facilitate L1-verifiability, extending the suite of supported curves, and re-architecting the design to more easily plug-n-play different front- and backends, and squeezing out more performance through GPU acceleration.

Nov 8 2024

SNARKifying the Ethereum Protocol
Inspired by Vitalik’s The Verge post I told the zkVM team at PSE: the time to deliver it is now, let’s put ourselves on the spot and do it! Draft proposal. They said 100% yes! Goosebumps. Looking forward to discussing this with Justin Drake and the gang at Devcon.

June 5 2024

Establishing a healthy boundry with the EVM: our pivot to RISCV zkVM
Bitter-sweet feeling writing this perspective. The Halo2-based zkEVM was an ambitious trial-by-fire project which provides so many lessons in creeping complexity. With those lessons learned, our new venture into GKR & Sumcheck is so exciting, the goal remains: <1s proving of Ethereum blocks.

May 24 2024

Deciding what’s next for PSE-Halo2Hallow
I am inclined to think that Halo2 is for that mid-size zkDapps with high performance requirements via hand-optimized constraints. Halo2 tables get bloated for larger systems (like full zkVM), and the API is too unfriendly for the casual dev. Hence, the sweet middle.

May 7 2024

Safe and secure CEX
We finished auditing the two variants [1] [2] Summa protocol from PSE, so much more came out of the concurrent auditing fellowship!

Feb 26 2024

ZK Bakery
Created this while surveying the landscape of zk[E]VMs, found the metaphore a helpful de-cluttering device.

January 15 2025

Excited to join the big-brains the EF’s PSE!
I will be working with the zkEVM and Halo2 teams, what a prilivege to work with these world-class guys.

02.12.2023

Speaking at Devconnect TrustX
So much was happening at Devconnect, gravitated towards security and ZK; top favorites: fuzzing of blockchain VMs, David’s beast-mode talk on ZK vulnerabilities, CPerezz’s folding recap, and ZK permeating Web2 and connecting it to Ethereum: ZK-email & ZKP2P (support them [1] [2]).

27.09.2023

Nomination for Arbitrum Security Council
Motivation for running, results from the 1st and 2nd rounds.
Thankful for the community support on and off the ballot.

25.08.2023

New article: The Evolution of the Multichain
The Triumph of Ethereum and the New Dawn of ZK-everythin

24.08.023

The excellent Daniel (collab on Spartan-ECDSA) and Rasul (collab on RLN) were key to the success of zBlock1

15.08.023

Six auditing fellowships at Electisec: solid numbers

14.08.2023

zBlock tops most clicked on Week in Ethereum

05.08.2023

Pilot ZK Auditing Fellowship concludes, ZK-in-Context series will continue

07.06.2023

Fun chat with Zapper fam

02.06.2023

Talk: The Multichain For Auditors

10.05.2023

Block 5 started hot and ended with two banger reviews published, congrats to graduating fellows

06.05.2023

yAcademy (now Electisec.com) research featured on Week in Ethereum

09.04.2023

The kick off of Block 5 of Smart Contract Auditing Fellowship, highest turnout despite stake requirement -also lowest acceptance rate

24.07.2022

Talk: Too Many Bugs to Count

24.07.2022

Good aspects of Ethereum killers

21.07.2022

The zkEVM wars, more color from Anthony

01.07.2022

Inter-chain security in Cosmos

24.06.2022

Devconnect was a lot of fun

04.02.2022

Attack surface of bridges

23.01.2022

Optimistic execution on Solana chokes finality as predicted

04.10.2021

ZK and the Oracle problem

08.06.2021

Parachain vs Rollup, more color from Anthony

26.05.2021

DeFi on Bitcoin

16.05.2021

Narrative and values

10.05.2021

Looked into Dfinity

29.04.2021

Switching to crypto

30.03.2021

What I like about the Cosmos community

13.03.2021

New article: Layer-2 for Beginners
Misinformation campaigns in the crypto space increase dramatically during bull cycles. Many sidechain projects misleadingly present themselves as layer-2 scaling solutions. This article explains what makes a chain an L2, for absolute beginners. more ..

17.01.2021

When it comes to Ethereum competitors, there is nuance
Ethereum competitors that align with its core values should not be equated with others. Shared-security sharded blockchains are a clear example

01.10.2020

Grateful for the community support <3

18.09.2020

Proposal for the UNI community

2.09.2020

Does Ethereum need the gas refund mechanism?
This inspired an interesting debate, an EIP to address this issue

27.05.2020

New article: Optimistic Rollups, from the Bottom Up
The best way to understand something is to build it. This article presents Optimistic Roll-Up (ORU) from the bottom-up through a simple example. Yes we will spec out a simple ORU MVP, so we can “touch and feel” what it’s all about. more ..

19.04.2020

ELI5 Reentrancy attacks

17.04.2020

New article: The Investment Thesis of a Blockchain Developer
Blockchain is not a new layer of abstraction but rather a unique trust API under the serverless computing paradigm. Which API provider (chain) should a developer build on? more ..

13.04.2020

Gourmet Crypto: Technical Blockchain Insights in Plain English
Introducing Gourmet Crypto: an off-the-beaten-path publication covering smart contract platforms, DeFi and layer-2 solutions more ..

05.04.2020

Consuming Blockchain: The Weakest-link Methodology
Don’t fall for marketing traps and Gish gallops of blockchain projects, use the “weakest-link methodology” to navigate the space more effectively more ..

17.02.2020

TLDR of ETH 2.0 AMA Part III