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In November 2023, Aleo engaged NCC Group’s Cryptography Services team to perform a review of the consensus mechanism implemented by snarkOS: “a decentralized operating system for zero-knowledge applications [that] forms the backbone of Aleo network, which verifies transactions and stores the encrypted state applications in a publicly verifiable manner.” The consensus mechanism is based on […]

During late summer 2023, Aleo Systems Inc. engaged NCC Group’s Cryptography Services team to conduct an implementation review of several components of snarkVM, a virtual machine for zero-knowledge proofs. The snarkVM platform allows users to write and execute smart contracts in an efficient, yet privacy-preserving manner by leveraging zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (zk-SNARKs). […]

In July 2023 Penumbra Labs engaged NCC Group’s Cryptography Services team to perform an implementation review of their Rank-1 Constraint System (R1CS) code and the associated zero-knowledge proofs within the Penumbra system. These proofs are built upon decaf377 and poseidon377, which have been previously audited by NCC Group, with a corresponding public report. The review […]

In Spring 2023, the Zcash Foundation engaged NCC Group to conduct a security assessment of the Zebrad application. Zebrad is a network client that participates in the Zcash consensus mechanism by validating blocks, maintaining the blockchain state (best chain and viable non-finalized chains), and gossiping blocks, transactions, and peer addresses. Five consultants performed the review, […]

This article is an attempt at cataloging all the types of bitcoin transaction locking scripts, their prevalence and their security implications. The data presented in this article was lifted directly from the bitcoin blockchain, which required custom code to quickly iterate over the entire blockchain (over 450 GB at the time of writing). The tool […]