The market is rife with paradoxes. While the privacy track often disappoints, ideological data privacy fills us with anticipation. Privacy remains an enduring dream in the encrypted world.

Cryptography serves as the primitive language of blockchain. Initially, when we first learned about Homomorphic Encryption (HE), we were still debating the possibility of Zero-Knowledge proofs (ZK) being applied to blockchain. But now, we’ve transitioned to discussing how useful ZK is and when to use HE.

For many, the technical aspects of cryptography seem distant, with high professional barriers that make it difficult for retail investors to participate. However, in December of last year, with the explosion of AI + Crypto, I noticed some European and American venture capitalists began to focus on the FHE track. On May 5th this year, Vitalik Buterin re-shared an old article from 2020 titled “Exploring Fully Homomorphic Encryption,” stating that “many people are interested in FHE lately.“ Meanwhile, podcasts and competition platforms focused on FHE have emerged.

So, what exactly is FHE, hidden away in ivory towers? What are its applications? Why is capital so keen on it? Today, Foresight News takes stock of 25 projects in the FHE track, spanning infrastructure, public chains, DePIN networks, AI, gaming, DeFi, and other fields.

What is FHE (Fully Homomorphic Encryption)?

Homomorphic Encryption (HE) was first proposed in 1978 to address the challenge of processing data without accessing it directly. However, until 2009, progress in homomorphic encryption technology was slow, limited to partially homomorphic encryption (PHE) that could only handle either addition or multiplication operations. In 2009, Craig Gentry’s 200-page paper, “A Fully Homomorphic Encryption Scheme“ introduced the first mechanism supporting arbitrary numbers of addition and multiplication operations, known as fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), marking a significant breakthrough in FHE technology.

While Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) are often considered the holy grail of cryptography, FHE holds similar significance with even grander visions. The difference between ZKP and FHE lies in the fact that ZKP can prove the authenticity and reliability of data without revealing the actual data itself, playing a crucial role in cost compression in Layer 2.

FHE aims to make computations “computable but invisible.” Traditional cryptographic algorithms require decryption before performing calculations on ciphertext, making it impossible to process encrypted data directly. However, FHE eliminates this need; it can perform calculations directly on encrypted data (ciphertext), yielding results consistent with plaintext calculations. To illustrate, imagine we encapsulate data A in a black box (encryption). When we send this black box to the recipient, there’s no need to extract its contents; the recipient can directly perform computations on the black box without leaking any information about the data A, thereby achieving complete privacy in data computation.

The application scenarios of FHE are vast, extending beyond just Web3 and blockchain to encompass any privacy data within the entire internet ecosystem, including advertising, personalized recommendations, AI, gaming, on-chain transactions, MEV protection, blockchain space auctions, on-chain voting, anti-sybil attacks, machine learning, healthcare, finance, natural language processing, and more. However, the reason FHE has not been widely applied is due to its significantly higher computational complexity and overhead. Currently, FHE computation speeds are four to five orders of magnitude slower than plaintext computations (10,000 to 100,000 times slower).

Although FHE protects data privacy, it does not guarantee computational integrity, thus it can be combined with ZKP. In recent years, integrating ZKP and FHE has been technically challenging, coupled with FHE’s high computational demands, hindering its application in the blockchain world. However, significant progress has been made in FHE technology in recent years, and the possibility of integrating ZKP and FHE has emerged, especially with the application of hardware acceleration in the ZKP field and the emergence of DePIN, which brings the potential to the computing network. Overall, the prospects and imaginative space of FHE are no less than ZKP.

Acceleration Hardware

Due to the excessive number of polynomials involved in the computation process, CPUs are clearly inefficient in handling this task. Ultimately, we still require GPU, FPGA, and ASIC for hardware acceleration. Lattica AI has conducted tests on GPU acceleration and CUDA implementation of FHE solutions. If GPUs can also achieve this, FHE acceleration will be completely decentralized. However, FPGA and ASIC remain the ultimate choices for acceleration.

Ingonyama

When it comes to ZKP, FHE, and hardware acceleration, one of the strongest contenders in this field is Ingonyama. Founded in 2022 by Shlomovits, a graduate of Israel’s elite military intelligence Unit 8200, Ingonyama is a semiconductor company. Its flagship chip is a programmable parallel computing processor similar to a GPU but designed to accelerate advanced cryptography, particularly Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) and Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). While Ingonyama currently focuses on ZKP, the computational aspects of ZKP overlap with FHE, making it logical for Ingonyama to accelerate FHE in the future.

Recently, ZKP hardware acceleration company Accseal (智芯华玺) entered into a strategic partnership with Ingonyama. Their respective products, Leo and ICICLE v3, will be integrated. Accseal previously developed a ZK ASIC chip, and its collaboration with Ingonyama will significantly reduce computational costs for users while improving computational performance.

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

Cysic

Cysic is a hardware acceleration company positioned to provide real-time Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZK) generation and verification layers. They offer ZK Computing as a Service (ZK-CaaS) based on in-house developed ASICs, FPGAs, and GPUs. Cysic has self-developed FPGA hardware and plans to launch ZK DePIN chips/devices such as ZK Air and ZK Pro, building a Prover Network for DePIN.

According to Leo Fan, co-founder of Cysic, ZK and FHE share many common modules, and much of Cysic’s current work can be reused in the FHE domain. Leo has also contributed to FHE research for Taiko and HashKey Capital, and has published an FHE paper. It is foreseeable that Cysic will also become a hardware accelerator for FHE in the future.

In February 2023, Cysic completed a $6 million seed funding round led by Polychain Capital, with participation from HashKey, SNZ Holding, ABCDE, A&T Capital, and the Web3.com Foundation.

Recommended Reading: “When ZKP Meets DePIN, How Cysic Brings PoW Back to Ethereum?”

Chain Reaction

Chain Reaction is a blockchain chip startup company that began mass-producing its blockchain chip, Electrum, in the first quarter of this year. The chip is designed to execute blockchain operations known as “hashing” quickly and efficiently, and can also be used for mining digital currencies like Bitcoin. Additionally, they plan to launch an FHE chip by the end of 2024, allowing users to process data while keeping it encrypted.

In February 2023, Chain Reaction completed a $70 million financing round led by Morgan Creek Digital. The funds will be used to expand their engineering team, bringing the total funding raised to $115 million.

Optalysys

Optalysys is a dedicated hardware acceleration platform for FHE (Fully Homomorphic Encryption). They are building hardware capable of large-scale FHE implementation through optical computing. Optalysys has launched an accelerator program, including simulators, software, and hardware. They target the intensive computations common in all FHE schemes, providing acceleration for all confidential computing solutions. Optalysys’s current product is the hybrid photonics chip Optalysys Etile, which combines digital interfaces with silicon photonics technology and integrates with traditional digital electronic devices in multi-chip modules, with its core being photonic circuits.

Basic Infrastructure

Zama

Zama is an open-source cryptography company that builds FHE (Fully Homomorphic Encryption) solutions for blockchain and AI. Founded in early 2020 by Hindi and Pascal Paillier, Paillier is a renowned cryptographer and one of the inventors of Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) technology.

As a service provider, Zama offers FHE solutions for Web3 projects, including the TFHE-re library, TFHE compiler Concrete, privacy-preserving machine learning Concrete ML, and confidential smart contracts fhEVM. Zama focuses on TFHE (Threshold Fully Homomorphic Encryption), with TFHE-re being a pure Rust implementation used for Boolean and integer computations on encrypted data. Developers and researchers can exert fine-grained control over TFHE to focus on advanced functionalities. fhEVM integrates TFHE-re into the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), exposing homomorphic operations as precompiled contracts, enabling developers to use encrypted data in contracts without modifying the compilation tools.

On March 7, 2024, Zama completed a $73 million Series A funding 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 raised funds will be used to continue researching and developing their FHE tools.

PADO

PADO is a decentralized computing network based on zkFHE (Zero-Knowledge Fully Homomorphic Encryption). Its ultimate goal is to develop a versatile zkFHE algorithm capable of supporting ML applications and even more extensive VM functionalities. This would widen its application scenarios, allowing any computational power to serve as a node and provide services to the network. Currently, PADO Labs is building fundamental components including PADO extensions, developer toolkits, and node SDK.

The most significant technical achievement of PADO is the integration of zk-SNARK with FHE, ensuring the authenticity and verifiability of privacy data computations. Additionally, PADO combines MPC (Multiparty Computation), IZK (Interactive Zero-Knowledge Proofs), and zkFHE. According to PADO’s technical roadmap, its short-term focus is enhancing specific functionalities of (F)HE schemes and launching customized products to support

zkFHE applications. Their main work currently prioritizes optimizing FHE algorithms and integrating ZK components to ensure verifiability.

PADO’s early HE schemes support linear operations, reducing the time for proving ciphertexts with homomorphic addition operations to around 0.7 seconds, potentially further reducing to below 0.1 seconds in the future. Compared to Zama’s solutions, PADO reduces computation time for homomorphic comparison operations by half. PADO also extends support to larger plaintext spaces such as u8/u16/u32, doubling the performance compared to Zama. Additionally, the performance of general zkFHE can be boosted 3 to 5 times with the assistance of Zama. In terms of development languages, PADO supports common languages like Python and Rust.

In terms of applications, PADO’s current focus is on data sharing scenarios within the AO and Arweave ecosystems. In April of this year, PADO collaborated with AO to initiate Verifiable Confidential Computing (VCC), which will be established on AO. PADO will gradually establish decentralized computing units based on AO and will use Arweave blockchain as the privacy data storage layer. Users can encrypt their data using PADO’s zkFHE technology and securely store it on the Arweave blockchain. Any computational requests within the AO ecosystem will be sent to PADO computing nodes through AO scheduling units. These computing units will retrieve users’ ciphertext data on Arweave and complete the corresponding fully homomorphic computations and computation integrity proofs based on the request.

In 2023, PADO completed a $3 million seed funding round.

Sunscreen

Sunscreen is a privacy-focused startup aiming to enable engineers to easily build and deploy private applications using cryptographic technologies such as Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). Sunscreen has open-sourced its own FHE compiler, a Web3-native compiler that converts regular Rust functions into privacy-preserving FHE-equivalent functions. This compiler provides optimal performance for arithmetic operations like DeFi without the need for hardware acceleration. The FHE compiler also supports the BFV FHE scheme. Sunscreen is also working on a ZKP compiler compatible with the FHE compiler to ensure computational integrity, but the overall proving process for homomorphic operations is currently slow. Additionally, Sunscreen is exploring decentralized storage systems for storing FHE ciphertexts.

In terms of its roadmap, Sunscreen plans to first support private transactions in a test network, then advance to supporting predefined private programs, and finally allow developers to write arbitrary private programs using its FHE and ZKP compilers.

In July 2022, the privacy startup Sunscreen completed a $4.65 million seed funding round led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Northzone, Coinbase Ventures, dao5, and individual investors including Naval Ravikant and Tux Pacific, founder of Entropy. Sunscreen was founded by Ravital Solomon and MacLane Wilkison, co-founder of the privacy network NuCypher, with the aim of facilitating the development of applications based on Fully Homomorphic Encryption by engineers. Prior to this, Sunscreen had raised a $570,000 pre-seed round.

SherLOCKED

SherLOCKED is an EVM blockchain privacy infrastructure based on Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). Developers can use it to write custom smart contracts that operate on encrypted data on the blockchain. In simple terms, it encrypts public transaction data on the chain, making it inaccessible to anyone since the blockchain data appears in encrypted form.

The formula for SherLOCKED is ZK + MPC + FHE, which consists of three components: the SherLOCKED SDK, node network, and zkVM computing infrastructure. When users send transactions to smart contracts, before invoking on-chain functions, the node network encrypts the data using MPC and passes the encrypted data to the SDK. Then, the SDK calls the smart contract function with the encrypted data as parameters, and the smart contract operates on the encrypted data (ciphertext). Since computing on encrypted data consumes a significant amount of Gas, SherLOCKED outsources this computation to a zkVM-based RISC Zero proof computer (Bonsai), which performs the calculation and provides a ZK proof. Finally, this proof is verified by relayers and validators on-chain. SherLOCKED can be deployed on any EVM network.

SherLOCKED was built by Nitanshu, co-founder of Rize Labs, during the ETHOnline hackathon held in October 2023 and made it to the finals, receiving recognition. Currently, the code repository for SherLOCKED 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 protection technology based on Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). In April 2024, Fair Math released the “Collaborative FHE-(E)VM Manifesto,” aiming to design FHE-(E)VM in a modular way. This allows different versions of FHE-(E)VM to coexist, using specification versions as standard references for developing applications that support FHE.

The manifesto also proposes the construction of an FHERMA competition platform, developed in collaboration with OpenFHE, dedicated to educating and incentivizing the development of FHE through unique structured competitions. According to its plan, the platform will initiate more than 25 FHE challenges in 2024. Poly Circuit is an application-layer FHE component library built through the FHERMA competition. Once the winners of the challenges are determined, their solutions will be added to the repository via PR. OpenFHE-rs, on the other hand, is a joint project between Fair Math and OpenFHE. It is the most comprehensive FHE Rust library in their FHE component library, available for Rust developers to use.

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

AntChain

AntChain TrustBase is an open-source technology ecosystem based on AntChain, which includes wide-area network consensus algorithms, zero-knowledge proofs, fully homomorphic encryption, and more.

Public Chain

Fhenix

Fhenix is an Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) supported by FHE Rollups and FHE Coprocessors, fully compatible with the EVM and providing comprehensive support for Solidity. It can run smart contracts with on-chain confidential computing based on FHE. Fhenix does not use zkFHE but instead employs Optimistic Rollup rather than ZK Rollup. It utilizes Zama’s FHE to provide on-chain confidentiality through fhEVM and focuses on TFHE (Threshold FHE).

On April 2, 2024, Fhenix announced a collaboration with EigenLayer to develop FHE coprocessors, aiming to introduce FHE into smart contracts. The “FHE coprocessor” works by performing calculations on encrypted data without first decrypting the information, avoiding the need to handle FHE computation tasks on Ethereum, L2, or L3 layers. Instead, these tasks are processed by designated processors. The FHE coprocessors will be protected by Fhenix’s FHE Rollup and EigenLayer’s staking mechanism. According to the roadmap, Fhenix plans to launch its mainnet in January 2025.

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

Inco

Inco Network is a Web3 general-purpose privacy protection layer and modular confidential computing L1 blockchain, providing privacy protection for on-chain applications. It combines Ethereum EVM with FHE and obtains protection for Ethereum through EigenLayer, allowing programs to operate and compute encrypted data without decryption, without the need for TEEs, circuits, off-chain storage, or coprocessors. Everything happens on-chain with native randomness. Inco also launched the Gentry testnet to address the privacy protection challenges of Web3. In addition, Inco can support applications such as gaming, DeFi (including dark pools, private lending, and blind auctions), enterprise solutions (such as confidential stablecoins, private RWAs, and private voting), and more.

In April 2024, Inco partnered with EigenLayer’s verification service project Ethos, enabling not only the sharing of Ethereum’s economic security but also allowing DApps on Ethereum to use Inco’s confidential computing. Inco also collaborated with the modular interoperability protocol Hyperlane to extend privacy data storage and computation to the modular blockchain ecosystem.

In terms of protocol development, Inco has established a strategic partnership with Zama, and its fhEVM also adopts Zama’s TFHE scheme. Inco’s fhEVM is compatible with Ethereum toolsets (such as Remix, Hardhat, and Metamask) and Solidity language. Other advisors of 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 funding round, 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 blockchain network that supports isolated execution environments using Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). They have introduced a novel form of FHE called HFHE, which operates on Hypergraphs. According to their official documentation, HFHE is compatible with any project and can operate independently. Most of Octra’s codebase is developed using languages like OCaml, AST, ReasonML (for smart contracts and applications interacting with the Octra blockchain network), and C++. This approach is relatively new, with limited discussion in the academic community. The security of this solution remains unverified and requires validation.

Octra introduces a novel consensus mechanism based on machine learning, utilizing participant nodes and support vector machines for load management. It selects confirmation routes based on a series of previously confirmed experiences, verifies results, and ensures non-interference in the process.

Octra’s lightweight client allows nodes to run on devices such as Raspberry Pis, personal computers, servers, cloud servers, or smartphones. Currently, the validation process of the Octra Network is in the testing and debugging phase, and the testnet has not been launched yet.

Shibarium

Shibarium is Shiba Inu’s Layer2 solution, currently developing a new Layer3 blockchain using Zama’s fully homomorphic encryption technology. The name of this blockchain has not been disclosed yet. TREAT token serves as the “utility and governance token” for this new privacy-focused Layer3 blockchain. It will be built on the Ethereum Layer2 blockchain Shibarium and is designed specifically for blockchain and AI applications, including smart contracts and confidential computing in machine learning fields.

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

In April 2024, Shiba Inu raised $12 million by selling its unreleased token TREAT to non-U.S. investors. The funding round saw 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, among others.

Secret Network

Secret Network is a privacy-focused public blockchain and Web3 privacy computing layer. As part of its Secret 2.0 roadmap, the team is developing a TFHE Layer1 network based on Fhenix and is also working on developing privacy-preserving rollups as a supplement.

DePIN

Arcium (Previously Elusiv)

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

Arcium primarily supports Solana, providing developers and applications in DeFi, DePIN, AI, and other fields with flexible access to trustless, verifiable, and high-performance confidential computing capabilities. It is not a standalone blockchain but requires access to the underlying blockchain’s data availability (DA) and consensus layers. This enables developers to deploy confidential smart contracts across different blockchains and also offers non-blockchain users the ability to configure the blockchain layer’s trust model according to their needs.

The Arcium network consists of two main components: the Arx network and the Multi-Party Execution Environment (MXE). The MXE combines techniques like MPC, FHE, and ZKP to achieve secure computation over encrypted data. The Arx network is a decentralized node network where anyone can contribute by running nodes. Arcium has launched an incentivized private testnet and invited 100 individual developers or team members to participate in testing. Selected participants can run MPC nodes or intermediate layer nodes, or utilize the MXE to build on-chain applications.

In November 2022, Elusiv completed a $3.5 million seed funding round 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 secured a $5.5 million strategic financing round led by Greenfield Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Heartcore Capital, Longhash VC, L2 Iterative Ventures, Stake Facilities, Smape Capital, Everstake, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, Monad co-founder Keone Han, and others. The total funding raised by Arcium has now reached $9 million. This funding round will be used to provide developers and blockchain applications with a trust-minimized and configurable cryptographic computing framework.

Privasea

Privasea is a DePIN+AI project integrating Fully Homomorphic Encryption Machine Learning (FHEML) into a distributed computing network. It also introduces the DApp “ImHuman,” utilizing FHE technology to ensure the secure execution of “Proof of Humanity” (PoH). Specifically, upon creating an ImHuman account, if a user forgets their password, it cannot be recovered. ImHuman scans the facial vector using the front camera, encrypts it directly on the mobile device without sending it to any servers, and Privasea has no access to it. The encrypted facial vector is sent to the Privasea server, where a personal NFT is minted, completing the Proof of Humanity process. Users who complete PoH will receive exclusive airdrops. Currently, ImHuman is only available on Google Play and will soon be launched on the App Store.

Privasea also builds the AI DePIN infrastructure Privasea AI Network, with the testnet already online. By establishing a decentralized computing network, the testnet provides scalable distributed computing resources for FHE AI tasks, reducing the risks of centralized data processing. Privasea’s FHE solution is supported by Zama for specific machine learning tasks.

In March 2024, Privasea completed a $5 million seed funding round with participation from Binance Labs, Gate Labs, MH Ventures, K300, QB Ventures, and CryptoTimes. In April, Privasea secured a new round of strategic financing with participation from OKX Ventures, Laser Digital backed by Nomura Securities Group, and Tanelabs, a SoftBank-affiliated incubator.

Cluster Protocol

Cluster Protocol is a DePIN proof-of-computation protocol aiming to build a decentralized GitHub for AI models. It utilizes Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) to provide secure and consistent rewards to GPU providers, thereby supporting individuals and small to medium enterprises globally.

In March 2024, Cluster Protocol completed its seed funding round with investment from Pivot Ventures and Genesis Capital. The specific amount of funding has not been disclosed. Additionally, Cluster Protocol will join Pivot’s incubation acceleration program.

Mind Network

Mind Network is an FHE re-staking layer for DePIN and AI, supported by Zama, aiming to realize the vision of “HTTPZ” (end-to-end encrypted internet). Its products include the FHE re-staking solution MindLayer for AI and DePIN networks, the FHE-authorized invisible address protocol MindSAP, and the FHE DataLake MindLake built on the FHE validator network via MindLayer. In MindLayer, users can re-stake BTC and ETH LST tokens to Mind Network, introducing FHE-enhanced validators to ensure end-to-end encryption for the verification and computation processes of AI and DePIN networks. Additionally, it introduces an intelligent proof (PoI) consensus mechanism designed specifically for AI machine learning tasks, ensuring fair and secure distribution among FHE validators. FHE computation can also be accelerated through hardware. MindLake is a data storage rollup designed for computing encrypted on-chain data.

Furthermore, Mind Network is launching a rollup chain together with AltLayer, EigenDA, and Arbitrum Orbit. The Mind Network testnet is already live.

In June 2023, Mind Network completed a $2.5 million seed funding round, with participation from Binance Labs, Comma3 Ventures, SevenX Ventures, HashKey Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Arweave SCP Ventures, Mandala Capital, among others. In the same month, Mind Network was selected for the fifth season of Binance Labs’ incubation program and was also selected for the Chainlink BUILD program, receiving a grant from the Ethereum Foundation Fellowship Grant.

Game

zkHoldem

zkHoldem is an online Texas Hold’em game supported by ZKP and FHE. It is currently live on Manta Network and will soon be available on Arbitrum.

Framed!

Framed! is a fully on-chain “mafia” game supported by Inco Network and fhEVM. It was selected for the ETHGlobal New York finals in September 2023. However, the official Twitter account of “Framed!” has not been updated since December of last year, suggesting that it may no longer be operational.

DeFi

Penumbra

Penumbra is a completely private cross-chain PoS network and decentralized exchange (DEX) within the Cosmos ecosystem. Established in 2021, Penumbra operates a shielded pool that allows for shielded transfers, staking, and exchanges. It utilizes Threshold Fully Homomorphic Encryption (TFHE) to execute shielded swaps between parties, which are processed as batch transactions. Penumbra aims to integrate all assets traded within the Cosmos ecosystem into a single shielded pool.

In November 2021, Penumbra completed a $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.

AI

BasedAI

BasedAI is a decentralized AI project based on ZK-LLM (Zero-Knowledge Language Model). Similar to Bittsesor, it can integrate Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) with any LLM connected to its network. BaseAI’s Cerberus Squeezing principle for deep compression can enhance the operational efficiency of LLMs by reducing computational load, and ensuring data remains encrypted during processing and transmission. Currently, BasedAI’s Prometheus testnet is nearing completion, with the Cyan testnet set to begin soon.

BaseAI has issued its own tokens but has explicitly stated that it will not conduct any airdrops.

Polyverse AI

Polyverse AI is a global AI data engine supported by privacy, Web3, and Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). It aims to become a “decentralized Google” and addresses AI data privacy issues through FHE and Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP). Its AI data layer provides support for Generative AI, DeAI, DeFi, DePIN, Metaverse, LLM, and other related applications.

Sight AI

Sight AI is a decentralized AI inference network that utilizes Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) to provide secure, private, and collaborative inference for future DeAI applications. It introduces vFHEML (Verifiable FHE Machine Learning) and accelerates proof generation using SNARGs (Succinct Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledge) on a ring. Considering the challenges of integrating FHE with ZK-SNARKs, Sight AI opts not to use ZK-SNARKs for data verifiability but combines SNARGs 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,@mustafa.hourani/explaining-the-recent-rise-of-fully-homomorphic-encryption-in-the-blockchain-industry-c7081fa05458"> 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 the 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 of FHE fully homomorphic encryption?”, May 2024.

FHE-Rollups: Scaling Confidential Smart Contracts on Ethereum and Beyond - Whitepaper

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