Overview of the FHE track: 25 projects worth paying attention to

Original author: Peng Sun, Foresight News

This market is full of contradictions. The privacy track is disappointing, but data privacy as an ideology is full of hope. Privacy is the eternal dream of the crypto world.

Cryptography is the primitive of blockchain. When we first learned about homomorphic encryption (HE), we were still discussing whether ZK could be applied to blockchain, but now we have reached the stage of how to use ZK and when to use HE.

For many people, cryptography technology is too far away from us, and the professional barriers are too high for retail investors to participate. In December last year, with the outbreak of AI + Crypto, I noticed that some European and American VCs began to pay attention to the FHE track. Until May 5 this year, Vitalik Buterin re-shared the old article Exploring Fully Homomorphic Encryption from 2020 and said that many people are interested in FHE recently . At the same time, podcasts and FHE competition platforms focusing on FHE have also been born recently.

So, what is FHE hidden in the ivory tower? What are the application scenarios? Why is it so favored by investors? Today, Foresight News takes stock of 25 projects in the FHE track, covering infrastructure, public chains, DePIN networks, AI, games, DeFi and other fields.

What is FHE (Fully Homomorphic Encryption)?

Homomorphic encryption (HE) was first proposed in 1978 to solve the problem of processing data without touching the data. However, until 2009, homomorphic encryption technology had made slow progress, with only partial homomorphic encryption (PHE) that processed single addition or multiplication operations. In 2009, Craig Gentrys 200-page paper A Fully Homomorphic Encryption Scheme proposed the first homomorphic operation mechanism that supports any number of additions and multiplications, namely fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), which achieved a leap in FHE technology.

We say that ZKP is the holy grail of cryptography, but FHE is also the holy grail of cryptography, and its vision is even greater. The difference between ZKP and FHE is that ZKP can prove the authenticity and reliability of data to the other party without revealing the real data, and it also plays a very important role in reducing costs in L2.

What FHE wants to do is computable but invisible. Traditional cryptographic algorithms need to decrypt ciphertext before calculating it, and then calculate the decrypted plaintext, and cannot process ciphertext. But FHE does not need this. It can directly calculate the encrypted data (ciphertext), and its calculation result is consistent with the plaintext calculation result. For example, we put a black box (encryption) on data A. When we send this black box to the recipient, there is no need to take out the black box. The recipient can directly calculate on the black box. No content about data A will be leaked during the calculation process, and the privacy calculation of the data is completely completed.

FHE has a wide range of application scenarios, not just Web3 and blockchain, but also any privacy data in the entire Internet system, whether it is advertising, personalized recommendations, AI, games, on-chain transactions, MEV protection, block space auctions, on-chain voting, anti-sybil attacks, machine learning, medical care, finance, natural language processing, etc. Of course, the reason why FHE has not been applied is also because it is more computationally intensive and more complex. At present, the calculation speed of FHE is 4 to 5 orders of magnitude slower than plaintext calculation (10,000 to 100,000 times).

At the same time, although FHE protects data privacy, it cannot guarantee the authenticity of calculations, so it can be combined with ZKP. In the past few years, ZKP and FHE have been difficult to integrate technically, and FHE has extremely high requirements for calculations, so the application of FHE in the blockchain world has not been launched. However, FHE technology has made great progress in recent years, and we have also seen the possibility of combining ZK and FHE. With the application of hardware acceleration in the field of ZKP, the emergence of DePIN has also brought possibilities to the computing power network. In summary, the prospects and imagination space of FHE are not inferior to ZKP at all.

Acceleration Hardware

Because the number of polynomials in the FHE calculation process is too large, and the CPU obviously cannot handle this process efficiently, we still need GPU, FPGA, and ASIC for hardware acceleration. Lattica AI has tested GPU acceleration and CUDA to implement FHE solutions. If GPU can also achieve this, then FHE acceleration will be completely decentralized. But in any case, FPGA and ASIC are the final choices for acceleration.

Ingonyama

When it comes to ZKP, FHE and hardware acceleration, we can never do without Ingonyama , the strongest player in this field. This is a semiconductor entreprise founded in 2022 by Shlomovits, a graduate of the 8200 elite unit of the Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Corps and a serial entrepreneur. The companys first chip is a programmable parallel computing processor similar to a GPU, but is designed to accelerate advanced cryptography, especially zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). Although Ingonyama is currently focusing on ZKP, ZKP and FHE have some computational similarities, and it is also reasonable for Ingonyama to accelerate FHE in the future.

Recently, ZKP hardware acceleration company Accseal and Ingonyama have reached a strategic partnership, and their products Leo and ICICLE v3 will be integrated. Accseal has previously developed ZK ASIC chips, and its cooperation with Ingonyama will significantly reduce the computing power cost of users and improve computing performance.

In November 2023, Ingonyama completed a $20 million seed round of financing, led by Walden Catalyst, with participation from Geometry, BlueYard Capital, Samsung Next, Sentinel Global and StarkWare. In January 2024, Ingonyama completed a $21 million seed round of financing, led by IOSG Ventures, Geometry and Walden Catalyst Ventures.

Cysic

Cysic is a hardware acceleration company, currently positioned as a real-time ZK proof generation and verification layer, providing ZK Computing as a Service (ZK-CaaS) based on self-developed ASIC, FPGA, and GPU chips. Cysic has developed its own FPGA hardware and will launch ZK DePIN chips/devices ZK Air and ZK Pro to build the DePIN network Prover Network.

According to Cysic co-founder Leo Fan, ZK and FHE have many common modules, and much of Cysics current work can be reused in the FHE field. At the same time, Leo has also contributed part of the FHE research written by Taiko and HashKey Capital, and has published a paper on FHE. It is conceivable that Cysic will also become an FHE hardware accelerator in the future.

In February 2023, Cysic completed a $6 million seed round of financing, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from HashKey, SNZ Holding, ABCDE, AT Capital and Web3.com Foundation.

* Recommended reading: When ZKP meets DePIN, how does Cysic bring PoW back to Ethereum?

Chain Reaction

Chain Reaction is a blockchain chip startup that began mass production of its blockchain chip Electrum in the first quarter of this year. The chip is designed to quickly and efficiently perform blockchain operations called hashing and can also be used for mining digital currencies such as Bitcoin. In addition, it plans to launch an FHE chip by the end of 2024, allowing users to process data while encrypting it.

In February 2023, Chain Reaction completed a US$70 million financing round led by Morgan Creek Digital. The funds will be used to expand its engineering team, and the total financing amount has reached US$115 million.

Optalysys

Optalysys is a dedicated hardware acceleration platform for FHE. It is building hardware that can realize FHE on a large scale through optical computing and has launched an accelerator program, including simulators, software and hardware. Optalysys provides acceleration for all confidential computing solutions for intensive calculations common to all FHE schemes. Optalysys current product is the hybrid photonic chip Optalysys Etile, which combines digital interfaces with silicon photonic technology and integrates with traditional digital electronic devices in multi-chip modules. The core is the photonic circuit.

Infrastructure

Zama

Zama is an open source cryptography company that builds FHE solutions for blockchain and AI. Zama was co-founded in early 2020 by Hindi and Pascal Paillier, a renowned cryptographer and one of the inventors of fully homomorphic encryption (FHE).

As a service provider, Zama provides FHE solutions for Web3 projects, such as the TFHE-re library, TFHE compiler Concrete, privacy-preserving machine learning Concrete ML, and confidential smart contracts fhEVM. Zama focuses on TFHE (Threshold Homomorphic Encryption), and its TFHE-re is a pure Rust implementation for Boolean and integer calculations on encrypted data. Developers and researchers can have fine-grained control over TFHE to focus on advanced features. fhEVM can integrate TFHE-re into EVM and expose homomorphic operations as precompiled contracts, allowing developers to use encrypted data in contracts without making any modifications to the compilation tools.

On March 7, 2024, Zama completed a US$73 million Series A financing round, led by Multicoin Capital and Protocol Labs, with participation from Metaplanet, Blockchange Ventures, Vsquared Ventures, Stake Capital, Filecoin founder Juan Benet, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, and Ethereum co-founder and Polkadot co-founder Gavin Wood. The funds raised will be used to continue research and développement of its FHE tools.

PADO

PADO is a decentralized computing network based on zkFHE. The ultimate goal is to develop a multifunctional zkFHE algorithm that can support ML applications and even more extensive VM functions. The application scenarios are more extensive. In the future, any computing power can be connected to the network as a node and provide services. Currently, PADO Labs is building the PADO extension, PADO developer toolkit and node SDK basic components. The PADO extension is a one-stop portal where users can generate data proofs for various platforms.

The most important technical implementation of PADO is to combine zk-SNARK with FHE to ensure the authenticity and verifiability of privacy data calculations. At the same time, PADA also combines MPC, IZK (interactive zero-knowledge proof) with zkFHE. According to the PADO technology roadmap, its main focus in the short term is to enhance the specific functions of the (F)HE scheme and launch customized products for applications that support zkFHE. The current main work is also to prioritize the optimization of the FHE algorithm and integrate ZK components to ensure verifiability. PADOs early HE scheme supports linear operations, which can shorten the ZK proof time of proving ciphertext and addition homomorphic operations to about 0.7 seconds, and can be reduced to less than 0.1 seconds in the future. Compared with Zamas scheme, PADO can reduce the calculation time on homomorphic comparison operations by half. PADO will also expand support for larger plaintext spaces, such as u 8/u 16/u 32, which can improve performance by at least 2 times compared to Zama. The general zkFHE performance can be improved by 3 to 5 times with the help of Zama. In terms of development language, PADO also supports common languages such as Python and Rust.

Specifically at the application level, PADOs current main focus is on scenarios related to data sharing within the AO and Arweave ecosystems. In April this year, PADO and AO cooperated to launch Verifiable Confidential Computing VCC, which will be built on AO. PADO will gradually establish decentralized computer units based on AO and will use the Arweave blockchain as a privacy data storage layer. Users can encrypt their own data through PADOs zkFHE technology and store it securely on the Arweave blockchain. Any computing request within the AO ecosystem will be sent to the PADO computing node through the AO scheduling unit, and the computer unit will send the computing task to the zkFHE computing node. After these computing nodes retrieve the users ciphertext data on Arweave, they complete the corresponding fully homomorphic computing and computing integrity proof according to the requirements of the computing request.

In 2023, PADO completed a US$3 million seed round of financing.

Sunscreen

Sunscreen is a privacy startup that aims to enable engineers to use cryptographic technologies such as FHE so that they can easily build and deploy private applications. Sunscreen has open-sourced its FHE compiler, a Web3 native compiler that converts ordinary Rust functions into privacy-preserving FHE equivalents, providing some of the best performance for arithmetic operations (such as DeFi) without the need for hardware acceleration. The FHE compiler also supports the BFV FHE scheme. Sunscreen is also building a ZKP compiler compatible with the FHE compiler, which combines with FHE to ensure computational integrity, but currently proves that homomorphic operations are generally slow. At the same time, Sunscreen is also looking for a decentralized storage system to store FHE ciphertexts.

In terms of the specific roadmap planning, Sunscreen will first support private transactions in the test network, then support predetermined private programs, and finally allow developers to use its FHE and ZKP compilers to write arbitrary private programs.

In July 2022, the privacy startup Sunscreen completed a $4.65 million seed round of financing, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Northzone, Coinbase Ventures, dao 5, and individual investors including Naval Ravikan and Entropy founder Tux Pacific. Sunscreen was founded by Ravital Solomon and MacLane Wilkison, co-founder of the privacy network NuCypher, to facilitate engineers to build applications based on fully homomorphic encryption. Previously, Sunscreen received $570,000 in Pre-Seed round financing.

SherLOCKED

SherLOCKED is an FHE-based EVM blockchain privacy support infrastructure that developers can use to write custom smart contracts that can operate on encrypted data on the blockchain. Simply put, public transaction data on the chain can be encrypted and no one can view it because the data on the blockchain will appear in encrypted form.

There is such a formula: ZK + MPC + FHE = SherLOCKED, which specifically consists of three components, including SherLOCKED SDK, node network, and zkVM computing infrastructure. When a user sends a transaction to a smart contract, before calling the on-chain function, the node network first uses MPC to encrypt the data and passes the encrypted data to the SDK. Secondly, the SDK calls the smart contract function with the encrypted data as a parameter, and the smart contract operates on the encrypted data (ciphertext). Third, the calculation of encrypted data consumes a lot of Gas, so SherLOCKED outsources it to the zkVM-based RISC Zero proof computer (Bonsai), which performs the calculation and provides ZK proof. Finally, the proof is verified by the on-chain relay and verifier. SherLOCKED can be deployed on any EVM network.

SherLOCKED was built by Rize Labs co-founder Nitanshu when he participated in the ETHOnline hackathon held by ETHGlobal in October 2023 and was shortlisted for the finals. Currently, SherLOCKEDs code base on GitHub has not been updated for 7 months.

Fair Math

Fair Math is a research company that adopts an open source and community-oriented approach, focusing on the development of privacy-preserving technologies based on FHE. In April 2024, Fair Math released the Collaborative FHE-(E)VM Manifesto, attempting to design FHE-(E)VM in a modular way, which allows different versions of FHE-(E)VM to coexist at the same time, using the specification version as a standard reference for developing applications that support FHE.

The declaration also proposes to build a FHERMA competition platform, an FHE challenge platform developed in cooperation with OpenFHE, dedicated to educating and inspiring the development of FHE through uniquely structured competitions. According to its plan, the platform will launch more than 25 FHE challenges in 2024. Poly Circuit is an application-layer FHE component library built through the FHERMA competition. Once the winner of the challenge is determined, its solution will be added to the repository through PR. OpenFHE-rs is a joint project of Fair Math and OpenFHE. It is the most comprehensive FHE Rust library in its FHE component library and can be used by Rust developers.

In February 2024, Fair Math completed a $1.4 million pre-seed round of financing, led by gumi Cryptos Capital, Inception Capital, and Polymorphic Capital, to promote the adoption of FHE.

AntChain

AntChain TrustBase is an open source technology system based on Ant Chain, including wide area network consensus algorithm, zero-knowledge proof, fully homomorphic encryption, etc.

Public Chain

Phénix

Phénix is an Ethereum L2 powered by FHE Rollups and FHE Coprocessors, fully compatible with EVM, fully supports Solidity, and can run FHE-based smart contracts with on-chain confidential computing. Fhenix does not use zkFHE, but uses Optimistic Rollup instead of ZK Rollup. It uses Zamas FHE, provides on-chain confidentiality through fhEVM, and focuses on TFHE (Threshold FHE).

On April 2, 2024, Fhenix announced that it will work with EigenLayer to develop an FHE coprocessor, hoping to introduce FHE into smart contracts. The so-called FHE coprocessor focuses on computing encrypted data without decrypting the information first. FHE computing tasks do not need to be processed on Ethereum, L2 or L3, but are processed by designated processors. The FHE coprocessor will be protected by Fhenixs FHE Rollup and EigenLayer staking mechanisms. According to the roadmap, Fhenix plans to launch the mainnet in January 2025.

In September 2023, Fhenix completed a $7 million seed round of financing, led by Sora Ventures, Multicoin Capital and Collider Ventures, with participation from Node Capital, Bankless, HackVC, TaneLabs and Metaplanet. In early 2024, Fhenix will release a public testnet and support ecosystem application development.

Inco

Inco Network is a Web3 universal privacy protection layer and modular confidential computing L1 blockchain, providing privacy protection for on-chain applications. It combines Ethereum EVM with FHE and is protected by Ethereum through EigenLayer, allowing programs to operate and calculate encrypted data without decryption, without the use of TEE, circuits, off-chain storage or coprocessors, everything is done on-chain with on-chain native randomness. Inco also launched the Gentry testnet to solve the privacy protection problem of Web3. Inco can support applications such as games, DeFi (including dark pools, private lending and blind auctions, etc.), enterprise solutions (such as confidential stablecoins, private RWA and private voting, etc.).

In April 2024, Inco and EigenLayer verification service project Ethos will not only share the economic security of Ethereum, but DApps on Ethereum will also be able to use Incos confidential computing; Inco also cooperates with the modular interoperability protocol Hyperlane to expand privacy data storage and computing to the modular blockchain ecosystem.

Inco has established a strategic partnership with Zama in protocol development, and its fhEVM also adopts Zamas TFHE solution. Incos fhEVM is compatible with Ethereum toolsets (Remix, Hardhat, Metamask, etc.) and Solidity language. Other advisors to Inco include Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal and Canonical GP and Lightspeed Ventures investment partner Anand Iyer.

In February 2024, Inco Network completed a $4.5 million seed round of financing, led by 1kx, with participation from Circle Ventures, Robot Ventures, Portal VC, Alliance DAO, Big Brain Holdings, Symbolic, GSR, Polygon Ventures, Daedalus, Matter Labs and Fenbushi.

Octra

Octra is a FHE blockchain network that supports isolated execution environments. They proposed a new type of FHE bootstrapped on Hypergraphs, namely HFHE. According to the official documentation, HFHE is compatible with any project and can run independently. Most of Octras code base is developed in languages such as OCaml, AST, ReasonML (the language for smart contracts and applications that interact with the Octra blockchain network), and C++. This approach is relatively new and has limited discussion in academia. The security of this scheme is still unproven and needs to be verified.

Octra introduces a new type of consensus based on machine learning, using participant nodes and support vector machines for load management, selecting confirmation routes based on experience from a series of previous confirmations, validating results and ensuring that it is impossible to interfere with the process.

The Octra lightweight client allows running nodes on Raspberry Pi, PC, server, cloud server or mobile phone. Currently, the verification process of Octra Network is in the testing and debugging stage, and the test network has not yet been launched.

Shibarium

Shibarium is Shiba Inus Layer 2 solution and is developing a new Layer 3 blockchain using fully homomorphic encryption technology from cryptography company Zama. The name of the blockchain has not yet been revealed. The TREAT token is the utility and governance token of its new privacy-focused Layer 3 blockchain, which will be built on the Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain Shibarium. It is built specifically for blockchain and AI and can be applied to confidential computing in areas such as smart contracts and machine learning.

TREAT will be the last non-stable token in the Shiba Inu ecosystem, which will launch a new token called Shi later this year. Existing tokens in the ecosystem include memecoin SHIB, BONE (Shibarium鈥檚 governance token), and LEASH (a fixed supply token held by Shiba Inu鈥檚 loyal users, providing them with BONE rewards).

In April 2024, Shiba Inu raised $12 million by selling its unissued tokens TREAT to non-US venture investors, with participation from Polygon Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Shima Capital, Animoca Brands, Morningstar Ventures, Woodstock Fund, DWF Ventures, Stake Capital and Comma 3 Ventures.

Secret Network

Secret Network is a privacy-preserving public chain and Web3 privacy-preserving computing layer. In its Secret 2.0 plan, the team is developing the TFHE Layer 1 network based on Fhenix and developing privacy-preserving Rollups as a supplement.

DéPIN

Arcium (formerly Elusiv)

Arcium is the DePIN network for parallel confidential computing on Solana. Arcium was founded by Yannik Schrade, Julian Deschler, Nicolas Schapeler, and Lukas Steiner. Its predecessor was Elusiv, a zero-knowledge-based compliance privacy protocol. It was rebranded as Arcium on May 8, 2024.

Arcium will first support Solana, which will enable developers and applications such as DeFi, DePIN, and AI to flexibly access trustless, verifiable, and high-performance confidential computing capabilities. Arcium is not a blockchain, and needs to call the DA layer and consensus layer of the underlying blockchain, allowing developers to deploy confidential smart contracts across different blockchains, while also providing non-blockchain users with the ability to configure the blockchain layer trust model according to their needs.

The Arcium network consists of two main parts, the Arx network and the multi-party execution environment (MXE). Among them, MXE combines MPC, FHE, ZKP, etc. to achieve secure computing of encrypted data. The Arx network is a decentralized node network (each node is called Arx), and anyone can contribute to the network by running a node. Arcium has launched an incentivized private testnet and invited 100 individual developers or team members to participate in the test. Those selected can run MPC nodes or middle-layer nodes, or use MXE to build on-chain applications.

In November 2022, Elusiv completed a $3.5 million seed round of financing, led by LongHash Ventures and State Stripities Ventures, with participation from Jump Crypto, NGC Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Anagram, Cogitent Ventures, Equilibrium, Marin Ventures, Token Ventures, Moonrock Capital, Monke Ventures, Solanafm, and others.

In May 2024, Arcium completed a strategic financing of US$5.5 million, led by Greenfield Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Heartcore Capital, Longhash VC, L2 Iterative Ventures, Stake Facilities, Smape Capital and Everstake, as well as Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and Monad co-founder Keone Han. Currently, Arciums total financing has reached US$9 million. This round of financing will be used to provide a trust-minimized and configurable encrypted computing framework for developers and blockchain applications.

Privasea

Privasea is a DePIN+AI project that integrates fully homomorphic encrypted machine learning (FHEML) into a distributed computing network. It also launches the DApp ImHuman that uses FHE technology to ensure the secure execution of Proof of Humanity (PoH). Specifically, after the user creates an ImHuman account, if they forget their password, they will not be able to recover it. ImHuman will use the front camera to scan the face vector and encrypt it directly on the phone. It will not be sent to any server, and Privasea will not have access to it. The encrypted face vector will be sent to the Privasea server and a personal NFT will be minted to complete the proof of humanity. Users who complete PoH will receive an exclusive airdrop. Currently, ImHuman is only available on Google Play and will soon be available on the App Store.

Privasea has also built the AI DePIN infrastructure Privasea AI Network, and the test network is now online. By establishing a decentralized computing network, the test network provides scalable distributed computing resources for FHE AI tasks, which can reduce the risks of centralized data processing. Privaseas FHE solution is supported by Zamas specific machine learning.

In March 2024, Privasea completed a $5 million seed round of financing, with Binance Labs, Gate Labs, MH Ventures, K 300, QB Ventures, CryptoTimes and others participating. In April, Privasea completed a new round of strategic financing, with OKX Ventures, Laser Digtal controlled by Nomura Group, and Tanelabs, an incubator with a stake in SoftBank, participating.

Cluster Protocol

Cluster Protocol is a DePIN computational proof protocol that hopes to build a decentralized Github for AI models, leveraging FHE integration to provide secure and consistent rewards for GPU providers, thereby supporting individuals and SMEs around the world.

In March 2024, Cluster Protocol completed its seed round of financing, with Pivot Ventures and Genesis Capital participating. The specific amount has not been disclosed. Cluster Protocol will also join Pivots incubation acceleration program.

Mind Network

Mind Network is an FHE re-staking layer for DePIN and AI, powered by Zama, and aims to realize HTTPZ (end-to-end encrypted Internet vision). Its products include MindLayer, an FHE re-staking solution for AI and DePIN networks, MindSAP, an FHE-authorized invisible address protocol, and MindLake, an FHE DataLake built on the FHE validator network through MindLayer. In MindLayer, users can re-stake LST tokens of BTC and ETH to Mind Network, and introduce FHE enhanced validators to ensure end-to-end encryption for the verification and calculation processes of AI and DePIN networks, while introducing a proof-of-intelligence (PoI) consensus mechanism designed specifically for AI machine learning tasks to ensure fair and secure distribution among FHE validators. FHE calculations can also be accelerated by hardware. MindLake is a data storage Rollup designed to perform calculations on encrypted data on the chain.

In addition, Mind Network is launching a Rollup chain with AltLayer, EigenDA, and Arbitrum Orbit. The Mind Network testnet is now online.

In June 2023, Mind Network completed a $2.5 million seed round of financing, with participation from Binance Labs, Comma 3 Ventures, SevenX Ventures, HashKey Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Arweave SCP Ventures, Mandala Capital, etc. In the same month, Mind Network was selected for Binance Labs fifth season incubation program, was also selected for the Chainlink BUILD program, and received the Ethereum Foundation Fellowship Grant.

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zkHoldem

zkHoldem is an on-chain Texas Hold鈥檈m game powered by ZKP and FHE. It is currently available on Manta Network and will soon be available on Arbitrum.

Framed!

Framed! is a fully-chained hitman (mafia) game, powered by Inco Network and fhEVM, and was selected for the ETHGlobal New York finals in September 2023. The official Twitter account of Framed! has not been updated since December last year, and it is suspected that it is no longer in operation.

DéFi

Penumbra

Penumbra is a fully private cross-chain PoS network and DEX in the Cosmos ecosystem. Founded in 2021, Penumbra runs a shielded pool that allows shielded transfers, staking, and swaps. It uses threshold homomorphic encryption (TFHE) to perform peer-to-pool shielded swaps, and these token swaps are processed as batch transactions. Penumbra aims to integrate all asset transactions in the Cosmos ecosystem into a shielded pool.

In November 2021, Penumbra completed a US$4.75 million seed round of financing, led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Interchain Foundation, Lemniscap, Robot Ventures, Volt Capital, Figment, Strangelove Ventures, Informal Systems and ZKValidator.

IA

BasedAI

BasedAI is a decentralized AI project of ZK-LLM. Similar to Bittsesor, it can integrate FHE with any LLM connected to its network. The deep compression principle of BaseAI Cerberus Squeezing can also improve the operating efficiency of LLM, reduce the amount of calculation, and ensure that data remains encrypted during processing and transmission. At present, the BasedAI Prometheus test network is nearing completion, and Cyan is about to start.

BaseAI has issued tokens, but has made it clear that it will not conduct airdrops.

Polyverse AI

Polyverse AI is a global AI data engine powered by privacy, Web3 and FHE. It aims to become a decentralized Google and solve AI data privacy issues through FHE and ZKP. Its AI data layer can provide support for generative AI, DeAI, DeFi, DePIN, Metaverse, LLM, etc.

Sight AI

Sight AI is a decentralized AI reasoning network using FHE, providing a secure, private, and collaborative network for future DeAI reasoning, introducing vFHEML (verifiable FHE machine learning), and using ring SNARG to accelerate proof generation. Considering the difficulty of integrating FHE with ZK-SNARK, Sight AI does not use ZK-SNARK to provide data verifiability, but combines SNARG with FHE to create vFHE, which reduces computational requirements and speeds up proof generation.

References: Vitalik Buterin, Exploring Fully Homomorphic Encryption , Jul 20, 2020. Mustafa Hourani, Explaining the Recent Rise of Fully Homomorphic Encryption in the Blockchain Industry , Oct 10, 2023. Taiko Labs, Introduction to FHE: What is FHE, how does FHE work, how is it connected to ZK and MPC, what are the FHE use cases in and outside of the blockchain, etc. , Nov 24, 2023. Haotian: Beyond ZKP, how does fully homomorphic encryption FHE empower blockchain? , November 2023. Jeffrey Hu, Arnav Pagidyala, Challenges Solutions of Onchain FHE: Unlocking the Holy Grail , HashKey Capital, Dec 5, 2023.Caleb Shack, Flawed Homomorphic Encryption , Big Brain Holdings, Apr 18, 2024.Haotian: How big is the imagination space of FHE full homomorphic encryption? , May 2024. FHE-Rollups: Scaling Confidential Smart Contracts on Ethereum and Beyond – Whitepaper

This article is sourced from the internet: Overview of the FHE track: 25 projects worth paying attention to

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