zkMesh: May 2026 recap

Welcome to ZK Mesh, a monthly human-curated newsletter covering the latest in advanced privacy-enhancing cryptography, distributed protocol development, and zero-knowledge systems research. Below we share recent research, useful articles, videos, podcasts, tweets, tools, project updates, and events in the ZK space and beyond!

• Zinc+: SNARKs for Polynomial Rings | Alexander Abdugafarov, Albert Garreta, Amit Kumar, Michał Osadnik, Psi Vesely, Ilia Vlasov and Kai Zhe Zheng

• Extending FRIDA Beyond Unique Decoding for Free | Nicolas Mohnblatt and Benedikt Wagner

• Jevil: A Catastrophic-Failure-by-Design Signature Scheme | Nadim Kobeissi

• Merces: Confidential Token Transfers Via MPC and CoSNARKs | Daniel Escudero, Florian Lugstein, Christian Rechberger, Verena Schroppel and Roman Walch

• Field-Agnostic SNARKs With Small Proofs Via Encode-Repeat-Accumulate (ERA) Codes | Anubhav Baweja, Giacomo Fenzi, Pratyush Mishra and Tushar Mopuri

• Bolt: Faster SNARKs from Sketched Codes | Kobi Gurkan, Andrija Novakovic and Ron D. Rothblum

• Doubly Aggregatable Signatures | Georg Fuchsbauer, Pranav Garimidi, Joachim Neu, Guru-Vamsi Policharla, Max Resnick and Ertem Nusret Tas

• Scaling Intelligence: Verifiable Decision Forest Inference (ZKML via GKR) | Makis Arsenis, Ryan Cao, Nick Cosby, Vishruti Ganesh, Ende Shen, Daniel Shorr and Benjamin Wilson

• UnifOMR: Oblivious Message Retrieval With Near-optimal Concrete Efficiency | Ben Fisch, Zeyu Liu, Eran Tromer and Yunhao Wang

• How to Simulate Random Oracles With Auxiliary Input | Yevgeniy Dodis, Aayush Jain, Huijia Lin, Ji Luo and Daniel Wichs

• From NIZK Arguments to ZAPs, Generically | Anish Banerjee, Brent Waters and David J. Wu

• On Succinct Non-Interactive Secure Computation With Malicious Security | Maya Farber Brodsky, Arka Rai Choudhuri, Abhishek Jain, and Omer Paneth

• Titan: Efficient Polynomial Commitments From IOPs Over Groups | Chethan Kamath, Ravi Prakash, Samipa Samanta, Sruthi Sekar and Nitin Singh

• LogVOLE: Succinct and Efficient Chosen-Input VOLE for ZK and Beyond | Lucien K. L. Ng, Peter Rindal, Akash Shah

• Icy-DVRF: A Distributed Verifiable Random Function Based On FROST Signatures | Ahmet Ramazan Ağırtaş, Arda Buğra Özer, Zülfükar Saygı, Oğuz Yayla

• FRI Soundness Above the Johnson Bound Via Threshold Halving | Raullen Chai and Xinxin Fan

• Device Binding for Anonymous Credentials On Legacy Phones | Anja Lehmann and Alexandros Zacharakis

• PQKryvos: Post-Quantum Secure E-Voting With Flexible Ballot Formats and Public Traceability | Nicolas Huber, Pascal Reisert and Ralf Kuesters

• zkSummit Recap | Zero Knowledge Podcast

• Vega: Zero-knowledge proofs for digital identity in the age of AI | Microsoft Research

• All the Ways Lead to Rome — zkSummit + zkProof + Eurocrypt recap | LambdaClass

• What Litecoin’s Attack Would Have Done to Zcash | zkDragon

• Groth16, Intuitively | zksecurity

• A shallow dive into formal verification | Vitalik Buterin

• How Ethereum plans to replace BLS with Post-Quantum signatures | Hashcloack

• VEIL: Adding Zero-Knowledge to Hash-based Proof Systems | Succinct

• An update on the ZK readiness into the execution client | Nethermind

• Honey, I Shrunk the Proofs! | Commonware

• User Research: Uncovering Problems in the Private Transfers Space | PSE

• Anonymous Credentials for Trustless Agents (ACTA) | zulu0echo

• PACTs: Protecting Your Bitcoin From a Quantum Sunset | Paradigm

• This week in Privacy | Miden

• All zkSummit14 videos | Zero Knowledge Podcast

• The Quantum Question Panel | Zero Knowledge Podcast

• Episode 400 - Quantum Advances, Hybrid Signatures and SNARKs to the Rescue with Dan Boneh | Zero Knowledge Podcast

• Episode 401 - From Access Control to Encrypted Execution with Auryn Macmillan | Zero Knowledge Podcast

• ZK Proof 8 in Rome | ZKProof

• Which types of cryptography will be broken by quantum computers and which will not? | Eli Ben-Sasson

• Without Privacy, Crypto Doesn’t Survive | Privacy Podcast

• How to use Plonky3 to generate proofs for Merkle trees | Hashcloak

• A Decade of Lattice Cryptography | Chris Peikert

• Hybrid PoA On Aztec: Proof of Asset Ownership Over Public and Private Balances Via ZK Proofs | Rio Kanehiro, Yohei Watanabe, Mitsugu Iwamoto

• ERC-8263: Onchain Proof Layer for AI Agents | VincentWu

• ERC-8262: Zero-Knowledge Compliance Oracle | DROO

• Wired the stacked sumcheck layout into the full WHIR polynomial commitment scheme in Plonky3 | Thomas Coratger

• CVE-2026-40323: SP1 V6 Recursive Shard Verifier Soundness Vulnerability

• Court-ordered Circle freeze traps $12.6 million in Zama cUSDC contract amid Overnight Finance suit

• This week on Aztec | Aztec

• The Aztec Stack | Aztec

• Computing with Secret Shares - Introducing Beaver Triples | Stoffel

• Brevis Vera Is Now Live | Brevis

• Introducing Confidential Transactions to OP Succinct | Succinct

• Announcing Lineth: a production-grade ZK rollup stack joins Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust | Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust

• Zcash Foundation Q1 2026 Report | Zcash Foundation

• Zebra 4.5.0 Release | Zcash Foundation

• Zodl 3.4.0: Keystone Management | Zcash Foundation

• Introducing SpeakUp | PSE

• OpenAC: ZK Proof of Personhood Using Government Credentials | PSE

• Spartan-WHIR: Transparent Post-Quantum SNARK | PSE

• Merces: 6 Months in | TACEO

• The Privacy Gap in Agent Payments | TACEO

• o1js 2.15.0: The One with the Native Prover | o1labs

• Introducing Protokit: Privacy-Enabled Applications on Mina | o1labs

• ETHConf | New York, USA. June 8-10

• Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium | Calgary, Canada. July 20–25

• Common S3nse | Amsterdam, Netherlands. September 4

• Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress | Mumbai, India. November 2

• Devcon India | Mumbai, India. Q4 2026 ​​

There you have it! Hope you liked this edition of ZK Mesh. Be sure to subscribe to get the next edition in your inbox.

Lastly, if you have something you think should be included in the next edition or suggestions for the format, tweet at us @__zkhack__!