Announcement: Changes to Prize 1 for ZPrize 2023. 500,000 Aleo Credits added!

GM ZPrize 2023 Competitors,

We have an exciting announcement from ZPrize 2024. We’ve just announced an expansion to Prize 1, which comes with an additional prize for competitors 🎉

🗞️ The TL;DR

The changes to Prize 1 splits the prize into two phases (1A and 1B). Prize 1A now includes a prize pool of 500,000 Aleo credits (the unit of account for the Aleo blockchain), and Prize 1B keeps the $500,000 USD prize. Participants will need to participate in Prize 1A in order to participate in Prize 1B. There are significant changes to the Prize 1 competition timeline; please take note of this if you are competing in Prize 1. 

With the revisions to ZPrize categories, here’s the new breakdown:

• 1) Prize 1: “Beat the Best” (FPGA/GPU)

  • (new!) Prize 1A: MSM

    • Time: October 2023 - February 2024

    • Details: Prize Specs

    • Prize Pool: 500,000 Aleo Credits 

  • Prize 1B: End-to-end (E2E) Acceleration

    • Time: Feb 2024 - May 2024

    • Details: Prize Specs

    • Prize Pool: $500,000 

• 2) Prize 2: “Beat the Best” (WASM)

  • Time: September 2023 - February 2024

  • Details: Prize Specs

  • Prize Pool: $500,000

• 3) Prize 3: High Throughput Signature Verification

  • Time: September 2023 - February 2024

  • Details: Prize Specs

  • Prize Pool: $500,000

👀 A closer look at the new prize

The first ZPrize competition in 2022 included a category “Accelerating MSM Operations on GPU/FPGA.” Multi-scalar Multiplication (MSM) is critical for ZK computations, and last year’s prize incentivized teams to compute the fastest MSM using available hardware (either GPUs or FPGAs). Last year’s top competitors improved MSM computation by over 130% (on GPUs) and over 15% (on FPGAs) and received rewards from the total $1.25MM pool.

The ZPrize 2023 Prize 1 will remain “Beat the Best" (FPGA/GPU). The goal of the original 2023 Prize 1 was end-to-end hardware acceleration focused on a ZK-friendly hash function known as Poseidon-Merkle.

Since last summer, however, the hardware space has undergone significant developments. The incredible work done by last year’s MSM competitors could be improved on even more with newly available hardware such as AMD’s FPGAs and NVIDIA’s Ada generation GPUs. So we’ve brought the MSM competition back to life as ZPrize 2023 Prize 1A. The overarching Prize 1 category will remain “Beat the Best” (FPGA/GPU) and we clarify the sub-prizes as follows:

• Prize 1A: MSM

  • Time: September 2023 - February 2024

  • Details

  • Prize Pool: 500,000 Aleo Credits 

• Prize 1B: E2E Acceleration

  • Time: March 2024 - May 2024

  • Details: Prize Specs

  • Prize Pool: $500,000 

Competitors in Prize 1 will now work on MSM first as Prize 1A, and then participate in Prize 1B for GPUs/FPGAs in early 2024. Participation in 1A is required to participate in 1B. This means if you are working on the current Prize 1 Specs, you’ll need to switch to working on Prize 1A through February 2024.

Prize 1A: MSM is a challenge for competitors to improve on the results of last year’s MSM prize winners and demonstrate how new hardware can contribute. Please submit this form (if you haven’t already done so) to indicate which tracks you are competing in. Competitors will be granted access to the necessary hardware.

The winners of Prize 1A will receive 500,000 Aleo credits (the unit of account for the Aleo blockchain) as a reward. When Prize 1B “End-to-end Acceleration” kicks off in March 2024, the winners will receive prizes from the $500,000 USD pool.

There’s more to learn about Prize 1A and the other ZPrize 2023 prizes! Join the ZPrize Discord, chat with the ZPrize architects, meet fellow competitors, and join the competition. 💪

Yours in privacy,

Team ZPrize