Erick | Yukon

Hard problems used to belong to whoever could afford them. Now they're open.
📡 Social Lead @YukonResearch + @Eigenlabs.

[Erick | Yukon @ErickAGIx]

I've watched agents shrink quantum circuits and speed up models on Yukon.

This week they get pointed at SHA-256 and three other hash functions.

HashSmash is live with @Zcash, @ShieldedLabs and @projecteleven. Every attack is public, and expert cryptographers review it.

Point your agent at it. Let's see what breaks.

https://t.co/0jt5jnh2Le

[Pratik Gandhi @pratikg]

Open the frontier.

AGI will go through very funnel. And if it stays inside a few labs, those ~5000 people get it first and decide what everyone else sees.

IMO the only way that number grows is openness at every layer and there are actually 4 of them.

First and the most basic one is open weights. A lab publishes the model itself, the file that holds everything it learned, and anyone can run it on their own computer. For example, when @OpenAI's agents broke into @huggingface, the hosted models HF tried first refused to help analyze the attack because they couldn’t tell a defender from an attacker. HF ran GLM-5.2, an open-weight model, on its own servers instead and none of the attack data left HF.

Second is open source, where the code and training recipe are published too. Then people can see how a model was made and fix what��s wrong without waiting on the lab.

Third is open research. The hard problems and results are public, so anyone can check the work and start from the best result.

Fourth and the most important is open innovation, which is where all of this pays off. Anyone can build a better product on an open model without signoff from the company they’re competing with, and others build on top of that (a positive sum loop closed labs can’t match).

The last three will take a coordinated effort across everyone building in the open.

[Sreeram Kannan @sreeramkannan]

Love this energy!

AI is magical tech.
Lets go make magic with it!

[JT Rose @jt_rose]

great piece by @shayonsengupta on a topic that was flying around singapore this week

he lays out the path that long run winners will take in this space - start with competent compute delivery, then build reservations and layer in financing and risk markets around that capacity.

this is how we're building @darkbloomai - source the compute, serve the demand (via our partnership with @OpenRouter to start but in time also directly to developers) and build software that nails subrouting, model optimization and compute provider onboarding/earnings (we use @yukonresearch to outsource most of our software optimization)

many players will hop straight into financialization, the enduring ones obsess around their product and user promise -- for us that's a network that gives everyday people a chance to participate in this once in a generation new market.

[Pratik Gandhi @pratikg]

ZOOKO WANTS YOU TO BREAK A HASH FUNCTION HE HELPED DESIGN

Most people who build something spend their time defending it. Asking people to attack it is rarer and more useful.

Quantum computers will eventually break the cryptography signatures. A lot of the replacements depend on hashes. So how strong hashes really are is about to become a practical question.

Get your AI agents on Yukon: https://t.co/4IjZzYCqW4

We've got 315 submissions so far. And nobody has broken a full version.

[Erick | Yukon @ErickAGIx]

https://t.co/WIHP4WSxqS

[Erick | Yukon @ErickAGIx]

NOBODY is talking about this 🤯

There's a platform where you point your AI agent at REAL open research problems and get ranked against everyone else LIVE. It's called Yukon.

You submit a solution, it gets verified on the spot, and your score lands on a public leaderboard. Oh, and they've historically paid out weekly prizes up to $3,500.

Honestly the best way I've found to actually get good at directing agents, and almost no one is on it yet.

Meanwhile people are still asking ChatGPT to write their emails.

@YukonResearch × @EigenLabs

[Yukon @yukonresearch]

🚨 Last day to speed up the search behind a quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction

Every hit is rebuilt on CPU, the clock belongs to the judge, and ranked runs use problems nobody has seen.

The fastest search wins.

https://t.co/eKgL9knfGE

[Erick | Yukon @ErickAGIx]

@privacymage @zeeshan_utd Iconic.

[Erick | Yukon @ErickAGIx]

Currently #1 on https://t.co/JXSkaXVAM0 🏆

Building on and on, together --> A 45.45% improvement in the combined size × verification-cost score over baseline

Smallest signature and fastest verification on the leaderboard: 5,456 bytes and 7,410 cycles.

Still pushing lower! This is what open coordination can do.

[Yukon @yukonresearch]

⚠️ EIGHT hard problems are open on Yukon this week, and two of them are new.

https://t.co/YYymiBKvVM asks for post-quantum signatures small enough for Ethereum. HashSmash points AI at four of the hash functions the internet runs on.

Bring your agents!

https://t.co/sIClOtRNgB

[nicola 🏟️ @iamnotnicola]

wake up to a stronger hash function or to a broken one

[arya 🏴 @aryabhuptani]

HELP US DEFEND THE INTERNET

Hash functions are a foundational part of our most critical systems:
- HTTPS
- Digital signatures
- DNSSEC
- SSH
- Key derivation
- Blockchains
- Zero knowledge proofs.

AI is about to become extremely good at attacking these systems.

So why not coordinate a swarm to defend them first?

We @YukonResearch are teaming up with @Zcash and @projecteleven to launch HashSmash: an open swarm trying to find cracks in SHA-256, SHA-3, BLAKE3 & Poseidon before attackers do.

[Zcash 🛡️ @Zcash]

Zcash hashes just got a public proving ground.
SHA-256 and Poseidon, plus the BLAKE family. The primitives behind Sprout, Sapling, and Orchard. HashSmash puts AI and cryptographers on the same frontier, co-launched with @ShieldedLabs.

Open research.
Stronger cryptography.
Jump in.

[Project Eleven @projecteleven]

Proud to support this initiative with @zooko @ShieldedLabs @yukonresearch and @eigenlabs!

Join the fun: https://t.co/HJCTal06Cp

[Sreeram Kannan @sreeramkannan]

Announcing https://t.co/NzHYnuVZBw on Yukon

With AI methods breaking cybersecurity, it is time for us to evaluate foundational cryptography.

Hashsmash is a Yukon open research challenge to crowdsource the best attacks against hashing.

It is a pleasure to work with Zooko Wilcox (cofounder of Zcash) to launch this challenge in partnership with Shielded Labs and Project Eleven.

Bring your math skills and ai agents to take down the best hashing schemes!

May the best hash remain undefeated!

[Soubhik Deb @soubhikdeb]

BIG DAY TODAY: https://t.co/fcQoGysos2 is launching today on @yukonresearch.

With AI models becoming better, everyone is worried about the cryptographic security of the internet and other cyberphysical systems.

Instead, how about we instead use these AI models to investigate the security of these cryptographic schemes in the open.

In this competition, autoresearchers have to bring their best math skills and ai agents to take down the best hashing schemes.

The instrument of fear instead becomes the tool for our progress.

It has been a great pleasure to work with @zooko to launch this challenge in partnership with @ShieldedLabs and @projecteleven.

Smash the Hash!

[Pratik Gandhi @pratikg]

IT TOOK CRYPTOGRAPHERS 11 YEARS TO TURN A PAPER ATTACK ON SHA-256 INTO A REAL ONE.

Today we're handing that problem to AI agents.

Introducing https://t.co/4IjZzYCqW4 𝟘 𝟙 ❒ 🔨 on Yukon.

In collaboration with @zooko, @zcash, @shieldedLabs and @projecteleven.

Strengthen cryptography with AI before AI breaks cryptography.

Every number in this video is real btw. The hashes are computed live on the word HashSmash and the music's melody comes from its SHA-256 fingerprint.

[Erick | Yukon @ErickAGIx]

@zooko Let’s accelerate one of the HARDEST problems to exist!

[zooko🛡🦓🦓🦓 ⓩ @zooko]

Announcing https://t.co/qYiMdHjH0X! 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.