Program Mechanism

This program is student initiated and is heavily inspired by the Google Summer of Code program. Students need to submit a proposal for a 8-12 week project based on the RISC Zero ZkVM. The proposal is on an individual basis (there are no group projects) and must contain details on your implementation approach and success criteria. Since we expect quite a few proposals, please be brief and keep the document to less than 4 pages (notion, google doc etc are okay). You can drop your proposal into our "Proposal for RISC Zero" section when you click the Apply for this Job button below. Please drop in your proposal by December 2, 2024 to be considered for this round of program participants. We will accept submissions on a rolling basis.

What to Expect

You can expect guidance in design and code reviews - as well as regular checkins during the program. If time/location permits, we would also be happy to host you in the office in Seattle or at one of our events that take place in NY/SF as well. 

We value the time and effort that you will put into the project and will provide a grant for your time commitment over your 8-12 week project of $6,000 USD. If you plan on using this project for college credit, please let us know in the proposal so we can match you with the right mentor. 

Project Ideas

Here is a list of project ideas that we put together to spark some joy:

1. Rust playground for writing RISC Zero programs: https://play.rust-lang.org

2. Executor support in the web browser, along with a Boundless TypeScript SDK

3. A Steel-based zkIndexer: You could build an indexer where every transaction is certified for correctness using steel proofs

4. An example of an SLA contract for long term agreements within the Boundless market

5. An ERC-4337 account abstraction smart wallet that uses Steel in its authentication logic (would allow for much more complicated logic).

6. A small service that would continually prove and Merkleize the hash chain for Ethereum and other networks, for efficient historical queries at any point in history (even pre-merge).

7. A Steel-based guest, host, CLI, and smart contract that allows for variable execution of any contract call without writing any Rust code (Cast Steel).

8. A demo of using Steel to run a contract that is never actually deployed on-chain. Two directions here would be to use this for “counter-factual contracts”. Another would be to have a contract that lives entirely off-chain with only a state root on-chain and basically allows you to create a “roll-app” defined by Solidity code.

9. A dark-forest style game utilizing our zkVM. If v2 is ready, this could include using the functional commitments mechanism to allow competitions between committed zkVM programs (e.g. competitors submit their image ID at the start of a “season”, and the game proceeds using their image ID as the program playing the game).

10. Decryption of OpenFHE cipher-texts inside the zkVM. (Note the idea is not running FHE operations in the zkVM.) This is useful for privacy use cases where the server is running something like a risk scoring algorithm over encrypted user data, and sends the user the encrypted result. The user needs to show the server the result in a verifiable way.

Compensation

• Grant: $6,000 per completed project. The first evaluation will occur at the halfway point of your project. For the first evaluation, we will pay 45% of your grant, and for the last evaluation, the remaining 55% of your grant.

About Us

We're on a mission to transform the internet for the better. Our team of innovative hackers, visionary futurists, and passionate nerds is devoted to creating a digital space that's safe, inclusive, and empowers everyone. By developing the world's first zero-knowledge virtual machine, we've laid the groundwork for running arbitrary code as a zero-knowledge proof. Utilizing a ZK Coprocessor to assist or enhance the compute of an on-chain application, we have created a unique package - the RISC Zero ZK Coprocessor, comprised of the zkVM, Bonsai, and ETH Relay. Now, we're ambitiously constructing an entire ecosystem around this groundbreaking technology.