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Why we believe that Pod, an optimal-latency, censorship-free, and accountable generalized consensus layer, is a groundbreaking technology for blockchains and distributed systems

Why we believe that Pod, an optimal-latency, censorship-free, and accountable generalized consensus layer, is a groundbreaking technology for blockchains and distributed systems

TL;DR: This post discusses Pod, a new notion of consensus that achieves optimal latency of one round-trip (about 200 ms), by removing inter-replica communication. We believe this paper and the work by pod network is groundbreaking and we want others to share our excitement and passion for their work,

Responsible disclosure: A potential sequencer-prover inconsistency in the Cairo VM

Responsible disclosure: A potential sequencer-prover inconsistency in the Cairo VM

On January 26th Starkware informed us that they had found a critical issue in the Cairo VM related to a program that would successfully execute on the VM but would violate the AIR constraints. A fix was already implemented in a PR, merged, and a release was made and deployed.

Summary on rStar-Math: showing how smaller LLMs can outperform bigger ones with deep thinking

Summary on rStar-Math: showing how smaller LLMs can outperform bigger ones with deep thinking

TL;DR: this post addresses the paper introducing rStar-Math and the techniques for smaller language models to outperform more complex large language models on math-related tasks. You can check the code here. rStar-Math significantly improved the math reasoning abilities of SLMs. For instance, on the MATH benchmark, it enhanced Qwen2.

Responsible disclosure of an exploit in Succinct's SP1 zkVM, found in partnership with 3MI Labs and Aligned, which arises from the interaction of two distinct security vulnerabilities.

Responsible disclosure of an exploit in Succinct's SP1 zkVM, found in partnership with 3MI Labs and Aligned, which arises from the interaction of two distinct security vulnerabilities.

TL;DR: We found two security bugs that can be combined to perform an exploit in Succinct's SP1 zkVM, which allows you to generate false proofs. In severe cases, this could lead to loss of funds. This was found thanks to a collaboration between the top notch research

LogUp lookup argument and its implementation using Lambdaworks for continuous read-only memory

LogUp lookup argument and its implementation using Lambdaworks for continuous read-only memory

Introduction In a previous post, we explained how to define constraints for a continuous read-only memory, presenting it as an example to understand how constraints are defined in general. This time, we will continue digging into this example to introduce the LogUp construction, adapted to univariate polynomials, and explain how

The future of ZK is in RISC-V zkVMs, but the industry must be careful: how Succinct's SP1's departure from standards causes bugs

The future of ZK is in RISC-V zkVMs, but the industry must be careful: how Succinct's SP1's departure from standards causes bugs

Why you should avoid having complex codebases and departing from standards when developing zero-knowledge virtual machines TL;DR: We found a subtle bug in Succinct's SP1 virtual machine, which allows a malicious user to prove the validity of false statements by subtly manipulating register 0 in the guest

Introducing DeMo: Decoupled Momentum Optimization for efficient distributed LLM training

Introducing DeMo: Decoupled Momentum Optimization for efficient distributed LLM training

TL;DR Training Large Language Models (LLM) with billions of parameters is computationally intensive and involves large communication in specialized data centers. Nous Research released DeMo, showing how to reduce these communication costs by orders of magnitude, decreasing costs and enabling training with poorer connections and less expensive hardware. This

Continuous Read-Only Memory Constraints: An implementation using Lambdaworks

Continuous Read-Only Memory Constraints: An implementation using Lambdaworks

Introduction When we first explored the world of STARKs, one of the most confusing concepts we encountered was constraints. We kept asking ourselves: How is it possible to summarize highly complex relationships between trace values using just a few polynomials? It wasn’t until we started implementing some examples that

lambdaworks - recap and updated roadmap

lambdaworks - recap and updated roadmap

Introduction It has been over a year and a half since we launched lambdaworks, our cryptography library for zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs. We built it focusing on performance, ease of use, support for hardware acceleration, and teaching others how to develop and understand ZK. Several advances in ZK in the last

How we implemented the BN254 Ate pairing in lambdaworks

How we implemented the BN254 Ate pairing in lambdaworks

Introduction The elliptic curve BN254 is currently the only curve with precompiled contracts on Ethereum, making it the most practical choice of a pairing-friendly curve suitable for on-chain zk-SNARK verification with proof systems such as Groth16 and PlonK. This work arises from the need to have our own implementation of

ZK letters from ZKsync

How we created a research fast VM for ZKsync

For the past few weeks we have been working on a reimplementation of ZKsync's (out of circuit) EraVM. The goal is to improve on its current performance and explore the possibility of adding parallel execution through BlockSTM. For that, we first had to make a deep dive into

Rust Latam image

Giving Back: The Rust Foundation

We recently contributed $100,000 to the Rust Foundation and would like to share the reasoning behind our decision and the process that led us to this commitment. A slice of Lambda's history is that it started as a group of engineers with experience working on scalable and

Pinocchio: verifiable computation revisited

Pinocchio: verifiable computation revisited

1. Introduction 1.1 Motivation Imagine you want to do a complex computation, that you cannot carry out in your computer, or you need to get the results from a computer that you don't trust. How can you be sure it was done correctly without redoing it yourself

An introduction to circle STARKs

An introduction to circle STARKs

Introduction Scalable, transparent arguments of knowledge (STARKs) have gained widespread attention due to their applications in verifiable computing and blockchain scalability. We can use STARKs to generate a short string that attests to the integrity of a computation and a verifier can verify it very fast. The steps to generate

MLIR Dragon on top of an Ethereum machine

EVM performance boosts with MLIR

We implemented 75% of the functionality of the Ethereum Virtual Machine, in two weeks, with five new hires, compiling the VM opcode logic to native machine code with a state of the art compiler backend. Why did we do this? How? The TL;DR is: to get a performance boost

Aligned Layer: First Aligned Testnet in EigenLayer

Aligned Layer: First Aligned Testnet in EigenLayer

Introduction Zero-knowledge and validity proofs have gained attention due to their capabilities in decentralized private computation, scaling blockchains, identity protocols, and verifiable machine learning, among others. They allow one party, the prover, to show to other parties, the verifiers, that a given statement is true in a time- and memory-efficient

Proof aggregation techniques

Proof aggregation techniques

Proof aggregation techniques Introduction SNARKs (succinct, non-interactive arguments of knowledge) and STARKs (scalable, transparent arguments of knowledge) have gained widespread attention due to their applications in decentralized private computation and scaling blockchains. They are tools that allow us to prove to another party that we did a computation correctly so

Beyond Single-Core: Enhancing VM Efficiency in Parallel Environments

Beyond Single-Core: Enhancing VM Efficiency in Parallel Environments

At LambdaClass, benchmarks and performance analysis are critical aspects of our development process. We always perform performance analysis in every PR via our CI pipelines to spot any performance issues. The Cairo virtual machine is not an exception since it is a core part of the Starknet network. In this

Implementing BabySNARK in lambdaworks in our internal bootcamp

Implementing BabySNARK in lambdaworks in our internal bootcamp

Introduction We started with an internal bootcamp two weeks ago to onboard new engineers to our team. We wanted to give the basic building blocks in cryptography and also an introduction to zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) using lambdaworks. Zero-knowledge proofs are a powerful technology that could shape the future in many

Our highly subjective view on the history of Zero-Knowledge Proofs

zero knowledge proofs

Our highly subjective view on the history of Zero-Knowledge Proofs

Zero-knowledge, Succinct, Non-interactive ARguments of Knowledge (zk-SNARKs) are powerful cryptographic primitives that allow one party, the prover, to convince another party, the verifier, that a given statement is true without revealing anything else other than the validity of the statement. They have gained widespread attention due to their applications in

How does Basefold polynomial commitment scheme generalize FRI

How does Basefold polynomial commitment scheme generalize FRI

Introduction lambdaworks is a library designed to provide efficient proof systems. We want it to support state of the art provers and associated primitives so that people can use them to build new applications. Among those primitives we have polynomial commitment schemes (PCS). These are a powerful cryptographic tool that

Mina to Ethereum ZK bridge

Mina to Ethereum ZK bridge

Introduction During the last few months, we have been developing a bridge between Mina and Ethereum. Mina is a layer-1 blockchain that uses zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs) to maintain its size at 22 kB. The bridge serves two purposes: 1. Allowing cross-chain transactions seamlessly. 2. Allowing applications to leverage Mina'

Happy birthday, lambdaworks!

Happy birthday, lambdaworks!

Introduction It's been almost a year since we started building lambdaworks! lambdaworks is our library that implements efficient cryptographic primitives to build proof systems. Along with it, many backends for proof systems are shipped, and compatibility with different frontends is supported. We wanted to give an overview of

A fast trust minimized intent based bridge solution for Ethereum and L2s powered by multi-proof storage proofs

A fast trust minimized intent based bridge solution for Ethereum and L2s powered by multi-proof storage proofs

Bridges are generally insecure and economically inefficient. We propose a bridge design that is simple, modular, and utilizes multi-storage proofs and the native messaging system between Ethereum and Layer 2 networks (L2s) as a fallback mechanism.

Deep dive into Cairo's AIR and the changes we had to do in Lambdaworks to be compatible with Starknet Stone Prover

Deep dive into Cairo's AIR and the changes we had to do in Lambdaworks to be compatible with Starknet Stone Prover

Introduction During the last months, we have been working to make Lambdaworks STARK Platinum prover with Starknet's Stone prover. We also want STARK Platinum to be flexible enough to be used as a drop-in replacement for other STARK provers, such as Winterfell (employed as the default prover in