Veridise
A blockchain security firm specializing in smart contract and ZK circuit audits
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About Veridise
Veridise is a blockchain security firm that applies formal methods to harden protocols. Its core business covers smart contracts, zero-knowledge circuits, DeFi protocols, NFTs, wallet integrations, and L1/L2 infrastructure. The company combines manual line-by-line review with in-house automated tools such as Vanguard (static analysis), OrCa (specification-guided fuzzing), and Picus (formal verification for ZK circuit determinism). These tools go beyond open-source scanners, enabling detection of subtle bugs like under-constrained circuits and reentrancy. A key differentiator is its full-context review model: every audit involves at least two auditors who each review the entire codebase, avoiding the siloed approach common in the industry. The market pain point is clear: zero-knowledge circuits are notoriously difficult to get right, and Veridise's analysis shows ZK audits are twice as likely to uncover critical-severity bugs compared to smart contract audits. A single missing constraint can render an entire circuit insecure. In the past six months (2026-03-12 to 2026-09-12), Veridise has focused on product integration, with ZK Vanguard now supporting Circom, Halo2, and custom DSLs, and offering seamless GitHub Actions integration for continuous monitoring. Picus supports Circom, R1CS, and gnark. The company has also published research on automated detection of under-constrained circuits (PLDI 2023). No major negative events were identified in the available information.
Over the past six months, Veridise focused on shared ZK infrastructure and security tooling. It released LLZK V1.0, the first stable ZK intermediate representation built on MLIR, connecting frontends like Circom and Halo2 with backends such as R1CS and zkLean, and enabling tools like Picus and ZK Vanguard to be reused across languages. The release added Rust bindings and Halo2/Picus backends; Galois independently contributed a backend; LLZK received Ethereum Foundation funding and moved to its own GitHub org. Veridise also launched LLEQ to verify consistency between constraints and witness code, initially supporting Circom with Noir next, targeting roughly 34/99 circuit-level vulnerability classes from SNARK studies. ZK Vanguard continued to expand static analysis and custom detectors, integrated with CI/CD via AuditHub.
Roadmap priorities: keep developing LLZK as a community-driven unified IR; advance formal specifications, enhanced template support for generic structs/functions, and a witness generation backend; broaden LLEQ to more languages; and scale continuous security monitoring and regression prevention through AuditHub.
Veridise core team: Co-founder & President Isil Dillig, UT Austin professor and formal verification expert; Co-founder & CEO Jon Stephens, UT Austin PhD focusing on smart contract and ZK security; CTO Kostas Ferles, UT Austin PhD in program analysis and synthesis; Chief Research Officer Shankara Pailoor, UT Austin PhD expert in ZK circuit verification; VP of Product Nikos Chondros, PhD in distributed systems, leading security tool development; VP of Engineering Andreea Buțerchi, responsible for product quality and engineering; VP of R&D Benjamin Mariano, focused on formal methods and security research.
Recent team change at Veridise: Chief Security Officer Ben Sepanski departed in April 2026. He joined in January 2023, overseeing security audits and research, and contributing to analysis tools for smart contracts and zero-knowledge circuits. His departure is the major recent personnel change. Ben has since moved on to other projects, while Veridise continues under its co-founders.