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Keccak optimization
Project
Keccak256 is the cryptographic backbone of Ethereum - yet within Zero Knowledge systems, it remains one of the most expensive primitives to prove. Bitwise-heavy and permutation-intense, Keccak has long resisted efficient zk-SNARK and zk-STARK implementation at scale.
vlayer has been pioneering work on reducing the barriers of proving Keccak256-heavy computation in Zero Knowledge systems. By applying the GKR Protocol, they’re enabling faster and more cost-efficient proofs for high-throughput Keccak workloads a meaningful advancement for zkRollups, cross-chain bridges, and efforts toward stateless Ethereum.
Keccak optimization
Project
Keccak256 is the cryptographic backbone of Ethereum - yet within Zero Knowledge systems, it remains one of the most expensive primitives to prove. Bitwise-heavy and permutation-intense, Keccak has long resisted efficient zk-SNARK and zk-STARK implementation at scale.
vlayer has been pioneering work on reducing the barriers of proving Keccak256-heavy computation in Zero Knowledge systems. By applying the GKR Protocol, they’re enabling faster and more cost-efficient proofs for high-throughput Keccak workloads a meaningful advancement for zkRollups, cross-chain bridges, and efforts toward stateless Ethereum.
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Use Cases
Through custom optimizations and deep circuit-level research, we’re designing an approach that significantly lowers the cost of proving Keccak256 in Zero Knowledge contexts, outperforms traditional methods in batch hashing, and scales with the needs of real-world Ethereum applications. This work is particularly relevant for advanced Ethereum-native systems such as zkRollups seeking lower gas costs, cross-chain bridges requiring strong verifiability, and stateless Ethereum efforts that depend on efficient hashing proofs.
Impact
This research directly supports important features within our ecosystem by accelerating historic proof validation for fast, decentralized data retrieval in Time Travel, and by enhancing secure, zero–knowledge–verified messaging between chains in Teleport.
Team & Background
Team Track Record
Vlayer is built to tackle two main issues: industry bottlenecks and developer experience. Despite web3's promise of a decentralized, privacy-preserving world, it still lags behind web2 due to poor integration of web2 data. Vlayer aims to solve this and unlock web3's full potential. Additionally, many products lack proper documentation, making them hard to use. vlayer, created by developers for developers, focuses on ease of use.
Ecosystem Fund’s Mission
Milestones
Project Scope
Resources & Links
