About / B(log)

08.AUG.2025

The stablecoin rush vindicates the thesis
On the other hand a landline cannot ^{0, 1, 2} be adaptive –but there’s hope.

27.JUL.2025

Electi’s Boosted Audits: win-win-win … win!
We call them boosted because our auditors are joined by ~20 aspiring fellows (vetted, < 5% acceptance rate):
   - Win for the client getting more eyes on their codebase.
   - Win for the fellows getting trial-by-fire training.
   - Win for Electi discovering top talent.
   - Win for the ecosystem as graduating fellows transfer their knowledge forward (fellowships are a public good).

08.JUL.2025

Halo2 bug
Responding to bugs is always stressful no matter how many times you do it.
Special thanks to Sean and Jack from Zcash for the discussions and the patch which we ported to pse-halo2.
Special many thanks to Suneal from zkSecurity for responsibly discolosing the bug.

06.JUL.2025

Shilling EIP7864 publicly and privately: just.do.it.gif !
L1, native rollups, light clients … goosebumps.
Actively trying to snipe devs to build for or around it.

27.JUN.2025

The extra-protocol zkVM strategy is being vindicated!
I was wrong about the case for enshrined zkEVM. However, long term, in the ‘ossified Ethereum’ epoch, enshrining the most battle-tested most audited of all zkVMs will I believe still make sense.

23.MAY.2025

The first issue of Electisec’s quarterly updates!
We looked at the (huge) backlog of DM’s and a big number of them is asking for updates on the next fellowships, so we kicked off a newsletter —for that and more!

24.MAY.2025

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

15.MAY.2025

Electi: the big-brain factory
It’s incredible looking back and seeing how far we have come.

15.JAN.2025

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

11.JAN.2025

Interview on Off-Beat
Slipped a red pill in there to snipe auditors into zkEVM.

20.DEC.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.

08.NOV.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 L1 devs & researchers at Devcon.

5.JUN.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.

26.MAY.2024

Interview on Proof Of Podcast
Some spicy takes in the second half

24.MAY.2024

Deciding what’s next for PSE-Halo2 Hallow
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.

07.MAY.2024

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

26.FEB.2024

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

15.JAN.2024

Excited to join the EF’s PSE team
Will be working with the world-class devs of zkEVM and Halo2 teams.
Bringing validity proofs to L1 has been on my mind since the rollup-centric roadmap.
L1 must protect its share of the execution pie.

02.DEC.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.SEP.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.

26.AUG.2023

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

24.AUG.2023

Cohort 1 (pilot) of ZK Auditing:
   - Bugs found. Talent discovered.
   - Fellowship content tops Most Clicked on Week in Ethereum.
   - ZK-in-Context series will continue.
   - Many thanks to the excellent Daniel and Rasul for mentoring on Spartan-ECDSA and RLN, respectively.

15.AUG.2023

Six auditing fellowships at yAcademy: solid numbers

09.JUN.2023

Fun chat with Zapper fam

02.JUN.2023

Talk: The Multichain For Auditors

10.MAY.2023

Cohort 5 of smart-contract auditing started hot and ended with two banger audits
   2 Criticals, 15 Highs.
   Congrats to the residents and graduating fellows.
   Special thanks to our guest speakers

07.MAY.2023

Our research featured in Week in Ethereum
Must read whether building or auditing DeFi

09.APR.2023

The kick off of Cohort #5 of Smart Contract Auditing Fellowship
Highest turnout despite the staking requirement -also lowest acceptance rate

27.DEC.2022

Great to see our grads flourish
Flooding the ecosystem with auditing talent was the original motivation of our fellowships, born in midst of bloody DeFi summer hacks.

18.NOV.2022

Cyrpto is imploding. We are auditing 🧘
We have been prepping for Cohort #4 over recent months as if nothing happened lol.
We believe, simple as that.

24.AUG.2022

Retrospective: 3 fellowships already wut!
The number of applicants is increasing but so is the bar for acceptance.
The number of audit requests is increasing but so is the onboarding of top residents to meet it.
And so the virteous cycle continues: fellowship → residency → audits → [sustainable]fellowships.

24.JUL.2022

Talk: Too Many Bugs to Count
Or why FV is fundamentally hard

24.JUL.2022

Good aspects of Ethereum killers

22.JUL.2022

The nuance in zkEVM wars, more color from Anthony

01.JUL.2022

No bueno: Inter-chain security in Cosmos

24.JUN.2022

Devconnect was a lot of fun
Also got to hear a lot of unsolicited gossip for some reason lol, illuminating.

04.MAY.2022

Vindicated: Solana’s dirty secret
Problems don’t get solved by gaslighting [2] [3].

03.APR.2022

Tezos: the formally-verified nothing-burger
Why can’t they just get themselves out of this hole

06.FEB.2022

Attack surface of bridges

24.JAN.2022

Optimistic execution on Solana chokes finality as predicted

05.OCT.2021

ZK and the Oracle problem

21.SEP.2021

1st Cohort of yAcademy Auditing Fellowships
We did this trial by fire: both in the organizing and the auditing. Special thanks to:
  - Invader for stepping in and helping
  - samczsun, storm, and andrej for mentoring
  - The fellows for a job well done

08.JUN.2021

Parachain vs Rollup, more color from Anthony

26.MAY.2021

DeFi on Bitcoin: a metaphor

16.MAY.2021

Narrative and values

11.MAY.2021

Looked into Dfinity

29.APR.2021

Switching to crypto

17.APR.2021

Six Months of DeFi   ⚖
It has been quiet a ride contributing ^{0, 1, 2, 3, 4}   to DeFi protocols and engaging ^{0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}   with their communities.

16.APR.2021

GG DeFi
“The response will be seen, not heard” -Arabic proverb

31.MAR.2021

What I like about the Cosmos community

13.MAR.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 ..

21.FEB.2021

First ZK-Rollup in the wild!
The ZK Rollup design was love at first sight

17.JAN.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.OCT.2020

Grateful for the community support 💚
Overwhelmed by the broad and generous support that my Gitcoin grant received.

15.SEP.2020

Investing in blockchain projects
I do not understand how some funds make their investment decisions.
It’s not that hard.

02.SEP.2020

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

01.SEP.2020

The psyop that is Synthetix SNX
UPDATE: vindicated. I did warn ^{0, 1, 2, 3, 4}.

12.JUN.2020

New research: Tokenized Gas in the Ethereum Protocol
Featured in the excellent Week in Ethereum.
EIP1559 as the GASETH Oracle vs that of an enshrined AMM in this proposal.

28.MAY.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 ..

20.APR.2020

ELI5 Reentrancy attacks

17.APR.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.APR.2020

Introducing 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.APR.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 ..

18.FEB.2020

TLDR of ETH 2.0 AMA Part III

20.DEC.2019

Catching the Ethereum Bug
Got Ethereum-pilled at ETH Waterloo.
Will be journaling this journey and sharing my learnings.

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