26th March 2025
We are excited to announce the launch of the Privacy Pools Trusted Setup Ceremony! This is a critical step in ensuring the security of Privacy Pools' zero-knowledge proving system. We invite the crypto community to participate and help make Privacy Pools fully trustless by contributing to the ceremony.
What Is a Trusted Setup Ceremony?
A Trusted Setup Ceremony, or multi-party computation (MPC), is a cryptographic process that generates the prover and verifier keys for zero-knowledge proofs. Privacy Pools uses zk-SNARKs to enable privacy-preserving transactions, and this process ensures that no single party can generate fraudulent proofs or compromise user security.
The more participants involved, the more secure the system becomes. An attacker would need to compromise every single participant in the ceremony to generate fake zk-proofs—something that becomes nearly impossible as the number of contributors increases.
Additionally, the entire ceremony process is fully open-source. You can find the MPC ceremony code and UI source code in our repository.
How to Participate in the Ceremony
Joining the Privacy Pools Trusted Setup Ceremony is simple:
Visit ceremony.pse.dev and click on the Contribute button.
Choose to contribute anonymously or sign in with your GitHub/Twitter account.
Follow the guided process to generate and submit your randomness.
If you prefer, compile the source code yourself for maximum security.
(Optional) Share your attestation publicly to support the initiative.
At ETHDenver, we’ll be running a live contribution event where attendees can participate on-site and receive guidance from the team. Remote contributions are also welcome through our ceremony portal.
Security Audit and Transparency
To ensure the highest level of security, our Trusted Setup ceremony is undergoing an independent audit by Oxorio, the same firm that audited Aztec & Starkware.
When Will the Ceremony End?
We plan to conclude the Privacy Pools Trusted Setup Ceremony on 28-02-2025. However, if demand is high, we may extend it for a few additional days to ensure maximum participation.
Potential UX Considerations
Due to the nature of multi-party computation (MPC), there may be occasional delays as the system processes contributions sequentially. If someone submits a contribution while yours is being generated, you may need to restart the process. The UI is designed to handle retries automatically, but in rare cases, refreshing the page may be necessary.
We appreciate your patience and encourage all contributors to stay online until their submission is confirmed.
Visit ceremony.pse.dev to contribute.