Shielded Labs

An independent Zcash organization

[Shielded Labs @ShieldedLabs]

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. ⤵️

[Shielded Labs @ShieldedLabs]

Michael Guima (@michael2xl) joins Shielded Labs as our Community Lead.

He’ll help strengthen our connection with the Zcash community, keep people informed about our work, and create educational resources that make our technology and Zcash governance easier to understand.

Michael is a long-time Zcash contributor. He leads Zcash Brazil (@zcashbrazil) and developed @openzcash.

Please join us in welcoming Michael!

[Shielded Labs @ShieldedLabs]

The participants at HashSmash continue to push the envelope.

A 39-round SHA-256 collision attack has recently been pushed under 100 bits.

Congrats to @cyberaxe for the breakthrough, and @FrostForger for the optimizations.

[Dariia Porechna 🇺🇦 @FutureDies]

Did we push round 39 SHA256 collision attack below 100 bits? Yes we did.
Kudos to @cyberaxe for the method that cut 15 bits at once and @FrostForger for optimisations!

[Shielded Labs @ShieldedLabs]

Shielded Labs is honored to receive one of the first grants from Grayscale’s $1 million Zcash funding initiative.

It comes alongside the launch of Zcash Invest, a platform to educate investors and advisors about the Zcash ecosystem.

The next era of crypto is here.

[Zcash Invest 🛡️ @ZcashInvest]

The power of Zcash ($ZEC) is built and strengthened by the community around it.

That’s why we’re directing $1M to non-profit organizations and initiatives advancing the Zcash ecosystem.

We’ve awarded the first $400K to @ZcashFoundation, @pgpzcash, @TachyonZcash, and @ShieldedLabs. We are proud to support the work they do in helping usher in The Next Era of Crypto. #ZcashEra

Learn more: https://t.co/COE0cuM78y

[Shielded Labs @ShieldedLabs]

Meet Shielded Labs’ newest engineer: Wei Jie Koh (@weijie_eth).

He’ll help strengthen the long-term security of Zcash, one of our core missions.

“I'm excited to join Shielded Labs and advance Zcash's mission of enabling financial privacy and sovereignty for all.” - Wei Jie

Please join us in welcoming Wei Jie!

[Shielded Labs @ShieldedLabs]

Curious how the Network Sustainability Mechanism is progressing since the NU7 launch? Check out this explorer to monitor the share of fees accumulating to the reserve.

https://t.co/ahNfxq9nrA

[Shielded Labs @ShieldedLabs]

The proposal deadline for what to do with ZCG and the Dev Fund is approaching.

Less than 5 hours for submissions!

[Jason McGee 🛡 @aquietinvestor]

https://t.co/6kQY8aGsWj

[Shielded Labs @ShieldedLabs]

Zcash has a new browser based wallet: Zillions @zillions_app

If you are interested in learning what makes Zillions different, check out this article.

https://t.co/HKxZvmQoBt

[Zillions @zillions_app]

https://t.co/uaYAW4nYD6

[Jason McGee 🛡 @aquietinvestor]

The NSM activates today with NU7, marking Shielded Labs’ first major mainnet deployment. I wrote about the security budget challenge Zcash inherited from Bitcoin and how coinholder feedback shaped the NSM through the governance process.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the NSM along the way!

[Jason McGee 🛡 @aquietinvestor]

https://t.co/6kQY8aGsWj

[Shielded Labs @ShieldedLabs]

Secure hash functions are a critical linchpin of digital infrastructure. Lately, Shielded Labs has been focused on strengthening them. Hashsmash is a collaborative effort to probe them, and Project Epoch has future-proof hash functions as a pillar of its focus.

Now BLAKE3-Servil has been released as a new leap forward. It is fast, like 10× as fast or more than competitors in many cases, and also secure: assembly-language parts come with correctness proofs, and the rest uses mutation testing.

BLAKE3-Servil achieves this because it was completely written by AI. Looking forward, we expect an update that makes the correctness proofs and/or memory safety complete.

[Shielded Labs @ShieldedLabs]

How does an idea actually become a Zcash network upgrade?

This post walks through the full path from proposal to mainnet.

[Jason McGee 🛡 @aquietinvestor]

I’m seeing a lot of questions about how the debate over ZCG and the Dev Fund will move forward and what happens to the proposals that have been put forward.

I posted an overview of how Zcash governance currently works on the Forum:

https://t.co/SSAKvPxVc6

[Shielded Labs @ShieldedLabs]

Taylor Hornby (@DefuseSec) on the state of AI-assisted software audits:

Current models are great at auditing, and everyone needs to be doing it. The two biggest problems that still need solving are:

(a) models are not good at properly understanding an issue’s severity, so there is still a lot of manual work to validate what the AI finds (this is the next thing I want to work on), and

(b) defenders need access to the best models without cyber safeguards in order to audit their own code.

Frontier labs need to do a better job of letting legitimate security research and auditing through the safeguards, and of providing AI audits and patching support to open-source projects. Anthropic’s Fable safeguards’ initial refusals to work on pretty much anything cryptography-related may have ultimately done more harm than good, since they blocked legitimate defensive research.

The situation has gotten better now that Anthropic has allowed users in their Cyber Verification Program to run Mythos on security tasks.

[Shielded Labs @ShieldedLabs]

Aayush Giri (@AayushStack) has joined Shielded Labs as a Forward Deployed Engineer on our Zero team!

He will help build and support Zcash infrastructure for exchanges, mining pools, wallet providers, and other ecosystem partners.

Aayush is based in India and joins us from Nethermind, where he started as a research engineer building a proof of concept of LatticeFold, a lattice-based folding scheme. He later became a Senior Developer Relations Engineer focused on Starknet and Aztec.

We discovered Aayush through his contributions to the Zcash community. He runs a shielded testnet faucet backed by his own node and solo miner, which allows it to produce and distribute test coins without relying on another operator’s infrastructure. He also built Speedrun Zcash, a set of hands-on challenges for developers learning to build on Zcash.

Please join us in welcoming Aayush!

[Jason McGee 🛡 @aquietinvestor]

Shielded Labs is doubling down on engineering to help keep Zcash users and holders safe. @AayushStack has joined our Zero team as a Forward Deployed Engineer. Welcome aboard, Aayush!

https://t.co/HrvlJ42Ij3

[Shielded Labs @ShieldedLabs]

@zooko and @ebfull have proposed a ZCG compromise.

For more details see: https://t.co/T6nmVPQVkJ

[zooko🛡🦓🦓🦓 ⓩ @zooko]

Tachyon Group (led by Sean Bowe) and Shielded Labs just posted a proposal to end future funding of the Zcash Community Grants program and reduce its treasury. ⤵️

[zooko🛡🦓🦓🦓 ⓩ @zooko]

Fam, check this out: Announcing BLAKE3-Servil! A new implementation of the BLAKE3 secure hash function. I used AI agents to make it *both* more secure *and* a lot faster. It's the opposite of an AI slop cannon. An AI laser beam. :-) ⤵️

[Shielded Labs @ShieldedLabs]

https://t.co/F379W4QWbl

[Shielded Labs @ShieldedLabs]

Happy Birthday, Zcash!

It’s been 10 years since “the most uneventful launch ever.” Big thanks to the scientists, Satoshi, the Zcash builders, and the holders who’ve made it possible.

Watch the original livestream and see how far we’ve come: https://t.co/7Qw0IJHKaD

[Shielded Labs @ShieldedLabs]

Did you know?

The destination of newly issued ZEC is a critical aspect of consensus design and remains untouched by the Network Sustainability Mechanism(NSM).

What the NSM enables is new sources of issuance support via different mechanisms for burning ZEC.

[Jason McGee 🛡 @aquietinvestor]

I’m confused by the outrage from certain people around Crosslink. At this point, it’s an R&D effort. There’s no activation proposal or ZIPs, and it isn’t on the mainnet roadmap. It’s a prototype design that we’re testing and iterating on.

Research and experimentation are good for Zcash. Permissionless innovation means people can explore ideas without first securing everyone’s agreement, and the Zcash community should encourage that. Good-faith debate is how Zcash improves, and we welcome scrutiny of Crosslink’s design, assumptions, and tradeoffs.

We’re working on Crosslink because we think stronger protection against reorg and rollback attacks may be a necessary security upgrade for Zcash at some point. AI or other forces could eventually challenge the security assumptions behind PoW, and our thesis is that a hybrid model may offer stronger security than either pure PoW or pure PoS.

Shielded Labs’ mission is to protect the long-term security of Zcash. It’s a common theme across all our projects, including Crosslink, the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM), and Epoch. We also demonstrated that commitment by bringing on Taylor Hornby as a security researcher to use AI tools to identify potential vulnerabilities, which uncovered the Orchard counterfeiting bug. We want to address potential risks before they become urgent, and recent events have shown the value of being forward-looking.

The burden of proof is on us. If we want Crosslink included in a future network upgrade, it’s our responsibility to demonstrate consensus. But that’s still a long way off. For now, we’re focused on improving the design, incorporating user feedback, and working toward a production-ready implementation for the community and coinholders to evaluate.

There’s still a lot of work to do before we’d propose Crosslink for mainnet, and we plan to run it on testnet for an extended period of time. If you disagree with Crosslink, challenge the design and help us understand what we’re missing. We all want Zcash to succeed. Let’s focus on strengthening and protecting Zcash as a whole by giving research and experimentation room to happen.

If you're interested in learning more about Crosslink or participating in the incentivized testnet, feel free to DM me.

[Shielded Labs @ShieldedLabs]

It has been 10 years since the elaborate setup ceremony for Zcash's first shielded pool, Sprout.

Since then, Halo 2 rendered the trusted setup obsolete with the launch of the Orchard pool in 2022.

Just this year, the Ironwood pool added formal verification to the shielded pool to ensure balance integrity.

Soon, the next shielded pool with Tachyon will enable a breakthrough in scaling, ensuring Zcash can be used by whoever needs it.