This is the beginning of something I’ve wanted for decades. To make a real dent. One deep enough that I can pour everything I’ve got into it. Deep enough for my daughter to be proud. Today, we’re unveiling Fermah. Fermah itself might be less than a year old, but my journey toward it started 20 years ago when I first learned about zero-knowledge proofs. Their seemingly implausible nature, yet groundbreaking potential, hooked me. I spent a summer reading Neal Koblitz’s book on “A Course in Number Theory and Cryptography”, and I remember staring at the ceiling, trying to prove Fermat’s Little Theorem with whatever little I had learned by then. After my undergrad in India, I had the incredible fortune to do my PhD in cryptography under the guidance of Prof. Amit Sahai. His foundational work in zero-knowledge proofs made me a fan before I even met him. When we first met, I called him “Sir” (like we’re taught in India to address our teachers), and it took him a whole week to convince me to stop! During that time, I worked on various projects that pushed the boundaries of zero-knowledge proofs, multiparty computation protocols, and more. You know, growing up in India gives you this drive to survive and create value. I had that mindset too—always on the lookout for problems to turn into impactful products. Prof. Dan Boneh can attest to that! Over the years, I’ve taken many weak ideas to him, and he was kind enough to break each one down for me. Thankfully, he steered me away from all of them—except for the idea of a universal proof generation layer. That one had him excited, and he supported me in countless ways to start Fermah. I’m forever grateful for that. So, why Fermah? There’s one persistent headache for anyone trying to adopt ZK tech: spinning up cheap, performant, and reliable proving infrastructure. It's a massive challenge. So much so that L2s, for example, are stuck with either half-baked, unincentivized networks of provers or, at best, centralized networks. The complexity of managing proving infrastructure, paired with its “contextual” nature in contrast to the “core” goals of their business, has made it a weak link in any ZK project’s stack. Specifically, sourcing prover machines, designing incentives that work, keeping those incentives balanced, maintaining liveness (without over-incentivizing), and keeping costs low (without under-incentivizing) is tough. It’s a whole project in itself. That’s where a universal proof generation layer comes in. It can aggregate demand from multiple sources, ensuring high utilization of the hardware, which drives down the cost of proof generation. It was clear to me this had to be built. No better set of backers than @a16zcrypto CSX Fund & @lemniscap! Also, truly humbled to be backed by our follow on investors@BanklessVC, @LongHashVC, @POpsTeam1, @publicworksfm, @zkv_xyz, @class_lambda, @daedalus_angels, @zero__dao, and @TheVelocityDAO - and others. The angels we have — @balajis, @musalbas, @nickwh8te, @sandeepnailwal, @jdkanani, @zac_aztec, @clairekart, @dlubarov, @sergey_nog, @gregoireljda -- these are people I have high admiration for. I mean… what a backing! The core of it all is the team. I have managed to put together some crazy passionate low ego team that only cares to ship. This is exactly what you will see us do. Ship. And make a dent. Deep, significant dent. Let's go!

Why Universal Proof Market? Let's face it. Do you think the proof system that was the most performant today is likely to be the most performant one tomorrow? Given the pace of development in the ZK space, there will be a lot of zkVMs, a lot DSLs with a lot of proof system backends. This truth has exactly aligned with how I thought the world will go. This is exactly why we decided to build a universal proof market. UNIVERSALITY in its truest sense: - all proof systems - all VMs - all DSLs - all chains That's FERMAH! Fermah = Universal Proof Market!

6/ I thought I'll add an example 3-round protocol:

RT @Khovr: The deadline for Short Term #Poseidon Grants has been extended to 15th March 2025 All researchers from…

RT @bezzenberger: Chime in if you're an iO fan, we need to figure this out, is iO the holy grail or not

@_ArnaudS_ Congrats Arnaud! Excited for Aztec upcoming milestones!

@bezzenberger @auryn_macmillan @arunim_shukla @Melt_Dem I loved that you brought this up, because answer to this is the crux of why iO won't make it: If you have an iO program that hides a signing key but you can execute the signer, what protection have you gotten? Access to that program is as good as access to the signing key 🙂

Respect for knowing what you are doing and doing it so well! I am easily bullish on you Ben and @HouseofZK ! Btw, you are too kind, but I definitely don't deserve to be in the same sentence as @EliBenSasson! He is an absolute powerhouse of ZK tech and the master behind PCPs that underpinned succinctness of snarks/starks.

@auryn_macmillan @bezzenberger @arunim_shukla @Melt_Dem Agree that iO as a tool is powerful, but:

@auryn_macmillan @arunim_shukla @Melt_Dem Agree about TEEs and ZKPs. I can't think of a use case that you can't power with ZKP+TEE but can with adding FHE.

3/ Implications for 3-Round Proofs: Since most known constructions rely on black-box techniques, this impossibility result poses a fundamental barrier to achieving 3-round zero-knowledge proofs for languages outside BPP. In upcoming threads, I'll explore alternative approaches that allow us to bypass this barrier and work toward more efficient proof systems! Exciting, exciting, exciting.

Wohoooo! Loved filming this episode. It should give the right high-level landscape of ZK space while keeping the big picture of role of ZK tech in mind. Enjoy!