GM everyone! What a month it's been for us at Antalpha Hacker House @Istanbul (Oct 22 - Nov 20)! It's been a rollercoaster of awesomeness, filled with joy, passion, and major achievements. This month was so epic that we couldn't cram it all into one letter – we had to split the ZKONNECT wrap-up into two parts. We've got so much to spill, and we don't want you to miss a beat!

Kicked off on October 22, we hosted a mind-blowing four-week ZKP-based research hacker house in head of and during Devconnect in Istanbul. Picture this: Ethereum's coolest xbuilders, brainy researchers, and the vibrant community all under one roof. We synced our events with Devconnect to mingle, collaborate, and dive deep into the stuff that keeps us up at night. Plus, we had a blast soaking in the vibes and flavors of Istanbul – what a city!

Especially thanks to our co-host Qiming Venture, our mentors SECBIT Labs, Ingonyama, EZKL and our Partner Mirana Ventures, Offchain Instabul. And of course, a huge round of applause for all hackers and guest speakers. This series of events was made possible by the support from all of you, you guys really helped a lot!

Now, brace yourselves for the recap!

Two weeks of white board sessions and demo days

From Oct 24 to Nov 9, we dove headfirst into hardcore whiteboard sessions – folding schemes, lookup, ZKML, Halo2, ZK hardware acceleration – you name it, we covered it. Oct 31 marked our first demo day, and we kept it going with the second round on Nov 8-9. Meanwhile, our hackers were killing it at Paradigm CTF and ZKHack Istanbul, notching up some seriously impressive scores (details coming up)!

The opening officially kicked off on Oct 23, and the excitement was through the roof. We met up with our hackers and mentors, and the vibe was electric. Everyone was pumped up and ready for this month-long co-working adventure. Let the good times roll!

Our coworking was open daily (except Sunday) 9am-7pm, we made sure the news got around so that anyone keen on our sessions could just swing by and join us. Over those two weeks, we racked up quite a few outcomes, with some notable takeaways:

On Nov24, ZK hardware acceleration solution Ingonyama got the ball rolling by presenting us with “the Road to Icicle”. As our our mentor, Ingonyama really provided tons of invaluable support!

Next up, a huge shoutout to Yu Guo from SECBIT, an exceptional ZK guru who contributed immensely! Leading several whiteboard sessions, Yu Guo guided us through "The Art of Folding," "A Not So Brief History of Lookup Arguments," and a mind-blowing "Hello Hypercube" demo hacked by the team. Understanding the history and research is crucial for hackers building applications, and kudos to Yu Guo for navigating us through the system and helping us break new ground from within!

The cherry on top was Zac, CEO of Aztec, making a surprise appearance as our guest speaker! Zac shared his thoughts on ZK in 2023 and presented an overview of "protogalaxy" which were packed with great insights, it's a must-watch!

Hold on tight for some hardcore halo2 hacking insights: Dante Camuto from EZKL explained how to split proofs in halo2. Check out this blog on the topic: “Divide and Conquer: Splitting and Parallelizing Proofs in EZKL”.

Best app ever! A hacker from team Daimo showcased their demo, unveiling the magic behind the scenes, granted by Privacy and Scaling Team and Ethereum Foundation.

But that's not all – over the three days of demo day madness, our hackers were flexing their brainpower and research mojo at an insane level! Let's dive into what they brought to the table:

• First demo day topics:

1. CQ lookup by Harry

2. zkCNN by Jinsuk

3. sumcheck and gkr by

4. Caulk/Caulk+ by Kai

5. Protostar by Jern

6. Nova by Chee

7. zkBench by Saurabh

8. SuperNova by Florent

9. Intmax by Mohammed

• Second demo day topics:

1. ZkBridge (distributed sumcheck) by Kai

2. CQ Lookup Part 2 by Harry

3. MEV-Boost++ by Akash

4. Caulk/Caulk+ part2 by Kai

5. MNN weightless neural network by Jinsuk

6. High level overview to Hypernova by Chee

7. CCS by Arun

8. Protostar/protogalaxy type folding by Ayush

9. Protogalaxy part2 by Jern

10. Verkle tree by Mohammed

11. Witnesses encryption &bitcoin bridge by Florent

12. Hardware acceleration for ZK by Saurabh

There are heaps of thrilling moments, and we've just scratched the surface! Hit up the recording playlists, and you can dive into all the fun whenever you feel like it!

ZKONNECT demo:

We love hacking! @Paradigm CTF & @ZKHack

We're geared up and all set to dive into the hacking madness! Just one day before our first demo day on Nov 30, our hackers formed a team called 'AttackOnCTF' to compete in the challenge Paradigm CTF and rocked it with a score of 1730.33, bagging the 27th spot! Big shoutout to AttackOnCTF!

And then, we hit up ZKHack Istanbul, the holy grail playground for ZK hackers! Hold onto your hats because out of 48 project submissions, we threw in a whopping 7 projects, and guess what? Every single one of them snagged some sweet prizes!

• Top 5 winners

  • AnonAbuse by CheeChyuan, @feynyman, @totorovirus, afk byte & sfyl sfyl. This project provides an anonymous way for hack victims to share info.

  • zkVM by Parin Chiamananthapong, Phatrasek Jirabovonvisut, Pakorn Nathong & Jern Kunpittaya. Fully functional zkVM that you can learn in one afternoon.

• “Chewing Glass” Prize winners

  • Hello, Hypercube by @kaijuneer, Even Lu & Yu Guo. It’s a low level construction of cryptographic primitives that reduce a zkSnarks black box to a univariate polynomial commitment.

• Honorable Mention

  • Zscan by @saurabhchalke. It’s a zk-focused explorer like Etherscan.

  • Baby CQ Lookups by Harry Liu. It’s a Python implementation of Cached Quotient Lookups.

• Polygon track winner

  • Circom Monolith ****by Ayush. This project ****writes a CirCom program that successfully calculates the output of hashing two inputs using Monolith hash function.

• O1Labs - Open track

  • Groth makers by Mohammed, Sulejman Sarajlija, mrq1911. It aims to build a groth16 verifier in o1js.

Big shoutout to all you incredible talents – you rock! Thanks a million for being such awesome teams!

Check it out! Here's the ultimate winners megathread for ZKHack with all the champs.

Running, Walking, and Eating Together

"Work hard, play harder" is our golden rule when it comes to throwing down at hacker houses. No way we're just grinding without adding a sprinkle of fun! Over these four weeks, we laced up our sneakers for some daily runs (everyone's invited!), explored a museum, and hosted an epic karaoke night. Plus, we had tons of great chats and feasts with everyone.

What’s Next?

We're only halfway through the highlights, and we're already feeling the nostalgia for those good times. Huge shoutout to our hackers, tech wizards, partners, cohosts, mentors, and all the rad friends who jumped on board!

Next part is about a series of night events for a full week along with the Devconnect week. Stayed tuned for our second part of this juicy recap!