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About 0xPARC
0xPARC is a foundation dedicated to applied R&D in decentralized applications, with a strong focus on zero-knowledge (ZK) cryptography. Its core work spans three areas: experimental projects (such as ZK-based games like Dark Forest and private data marketplaces), shared open-source infrastructure (developer tools like circom-ecdsa and plonkathon), and community education (programs like ETHUniversity and the Applied ZK Learning Group). The organization's key differentiator is its application-first approach to ZK technology, filling the gap between theoretical cryptographic research and practical, usable dapps. It addresses the market pain point that ZK tech, while powerful, is difficult for developers to adopt due to a lack of accessible tools, learning resources, and real-world use cases. In the past six months (March to September 2026), 0xPARC has continued its grant-giving and ecosystem support activities, including co-administering the ZKTech matching pool on Gitcoin GR13 and contributing $75,000 to support usability, tooling, and ZK application projects. No major negative developments have been reported in the last two years.
0xPARC (Program for Applied Research in Cryptography) was founded in October 2021 as a distributed 'skunk works' supporting decentralized application R&D, with a three-part mandate: R&D, shared infrastructure, and education/community-building.
In March 2022, during Gitcoin GR13, 0xPARC partnered with ZKValidator to administer the zkTech matching pool, contributing $75,000 from its Public Ecosystem Development Fund (funded by Sequoia's NFT sale for public goods). The total pool reached $275,000 with support from the Ethereum Foundation, Gnosis, Anoma, Polygon, and others.
0xPARC has driven long-term innovation through open-source ZK tooling: Circom (a zkSNARK circuit language powering Tornado, Polygon Hermez, Dark Forest), CirC (compilers from high-level languages to ZK circuits), Ecne (formal verification for circuits), and zkREPL (online circuit editor).
Their research explores the 'Universal Protocol' for proving arbitrary statements, aiming to reduce ZK proof overhead from ~1,000,000x toward 10x via specialized hardware, plus proof delegation on secret-shared data and FHE-MPC hybrids for efficient secure computation with sublinear memory access.
Education initiatives include the Applied ZK Learning Group (free program for 20 researchers/developers), ZK Travel Scholarships (co-administered with Stanford CBR), and projects like ZKxZK (pairing-based crypto circuits), ZKML (MNIST classifier in circom), and a ZK Data Marketplace proof-of-concept.
In the past six months, Lattice, a game infrastructure team supported by 0xPARC, announced in April 2026 that it would gradually wind down, with its Redstone network shutting down on May 15, 2026. The DUST project has migrated to DUST Chain and continues to be supported by 0xPARC. MUD, Quarry, and Dozer have all been open-sourced. Regarding future focus, 0xPARC's official website reaffirms its mission to promote application-level innovation on Ethereum and other decentralized platforms, focusing on R&D, open-source tools and infrastructure, education, and ecosystem development. It aims to fund "moonshot" experimental projects, cultivate an independent and decentralized ecosystem, and emphasize value creation over value capture, supporting experiments with novel ownership and organizational models through no-strings-attached grants.
Co-founders:
Brian Gu (gubsheep): Co-founder of 0xPARC, creator of Dark Forest, MIT graduate, former Ethereum Foundation member.
Justin Glibert: Co-founder of 0xPARC, working on digital physics, cryptography, cryptosystems, and education; also involved with Lattice.