vac:acz:nes:2025q3-nescience-consulting
Creating research documents and specifications for Nescience architecture
Description
ACZ offers review consulting services to Nescience, acting as a bridge between Nescience researchers and engineers, facilitating faster and more efficient communication between the two groups.
By utilizing the Nescience Consulting commitment,
we will reinforce the Conduit of Expertise narrative by:
- The Nescience specifications will be reviewed and refined from an engineering perspective.
- Addressing any potential gaps in the architecture, whether theoretical or practical, if any are identified
- Improve communication between Nescience researchers and developers.
We will also strengthen the Premier Research Destination narrative by:
- This will enable the Nescience project to be more effectively integrated and introduced into the ecosystem.
Task List
zkVM Benchmark and Survey
- fully qualified name:
vac:acz:nes:2025q3-nescience-consulting:zkvm-benchmark - owner: Marvin
- status: done
- start-date: 2025/07/01
- end-date: 2025/07/18
Description
The zkVM benchmarks consisted on basic arithmetic tests. However, this is not reflective on common computations that the transaction kernel circuits use. In this task, we extend these tests to include the following benchmarks:
- Elliptic curve arithmetic (scalar multiplication and group addition)
- jubjub, secp256k1, pallas, vesta, bn254 and bls12-381
- Merkle proof verification
- Used for non-membership (nullifiers) and membership (UTXO commitments)
- Nullifier generation
Additionally, more zkVMs have been developed and released since Nescience’s initial survey. We should analyze a selection of new zkVMs (e.g., zisk and Secret VM) in terms of their usage in NSSA.
Changes to task: Nescience’s reaffirmed selection of Risc0 negates the necessity of non-Risc0 tests. Additionally, surveys for additionally zkVMs are not needed.
Deliverables
- A notion doc to the Nescience notion workspace
- A PR to the vacp2p/nescience-zkvm-testing repo
Alternative UTXO commitment
- fully qualified name:
vac:acz:nes:2025q3-nescience-consulting:alt-utxo - owner: Marvin
- status: done
- start-date: 2025/07/11
- end-date: 2025/07/18
Description
In the zkVM benchmarks we determined that Pedersen commitments are not practical within Risc0. This is a critical issue that must be mitigated. In this task, we propose an alternate commitment scheme for UTXOs. Additionally, we demonstrate that this proposal is practical within Risc0 by writing an appropriate guest program.
Deliverables
- A notion doc to the Nescience notion workspace that describing replacement for UTXO commitment scheme.
- A PR to the vacp2p/nescience-zkvm-testing repo
NSSA feasibility as L2 on Cosmos
- fully qualified name:
vac:acz:nes:2025q3-nescience-consulting:cosmos-l2-feasibility - owner: Marvin
- status: done
- start-date: 2025/07/15
- end-date: 2025/07/25
Description
Nescience’s state seperation architecture (NSSA) is designed to function as a L1 and as a L2. In this task, we will examine the requirements for running NSSA as a L2 on Cosmos.
Deliverables
- A notion doc to the Nescience notion workspace
Privacy Projects Analysis
- fully qualified name:
vac:acz:nes:2025q3-nescience-consulting:privacy-projects-analysis - owner: Marvin
- status: started (10%)
- start-date: 2025/08/25
- end-date: 2025/08/08
Description
This task entails to investigate and analyse existing similar projects. This deep dive into other projects make it concrete how Nescience sets itself out from each one. Basically analyse: - Privacy claims (and if possible, reality of these claims) - Techniques used (e.g., consensus, snarks, etc)
Deliverables
- A notion doc to the Nescience notion workspace
Specs for Key Protocols
- fully qualified name:
vac:acz:nes:2025q3-nescience-consulting:key-protocol-spec - owner: Marvin
- status: done
- start-date: 2025/08/05
- end-date: 2025/08/19
Description
This task entails to reparing a document that defines the concrete specifications for key-related hash function digests. The current key protocol specifications do not explicitly define the digest format for each hash function invocation. This task aims to formalize the byte-level construction of these digests, similar to how protocols like Zcash and Iron Fish document their hash inputs and outputs in detail.
Providing precise digest specifications will reduce engineering and implementation overhead, enable robust versioning and tracking for NSSA key formats, and ensure fixed-length digests that prevent key collision risks.
Deliverables
- A notion doc to the Nescience notion workspace
Fee Mechanism
- fully qualified name:
vac:acz:nes:2025q3-nescience-consulting:fee-mechanism - owner: Marvin
- status: deprecated
- start-date:
- end-date:
Description
This task entails conducting preliminary research on existing survey fee mechanisms, with a focus on models that involve interactions between light users and service nodes. The goal is to identify viable approaches that could be integrated into the current architecture. This task may also help streamline responsibilities across the team by potentially reallocating workload depending on the findings.
Deliverables
- A notion doc to the Nescience notion workspace
DEX Research
- fully qualified name:
vac:acz:nes:2025q3-nescience-consulting:dex-research - owner: Marvin
- status: not started
- start-date:
- end-date:
Description
This task involves a high-level comparative analysis of existing privacy-focused projects to Nescience. Since newcomers to privacy and Web3 may find the claims of these projects difficult to navigate, the analysis should clarify how Nescience differs, with a focus on DEX users. It should explain why a decentralized exchange would be built on NSSA and what advantages exist for migrating an existing DEX to NSSA. The analysis should consider both private and public DEX scenarios. By the end of this task, we should have a clear understanding of how Nescience compares to other projects from a user perspective.
Deliverables
- A notion doc to the Nescience notion workspace that summarizes existing projects from a user perspective, notes their roadmap progress, and compares each to NSSA.
Regulatory Positioning
- fully qualified name:
vac:acz:nes:2025q3-nescience-consulting:regulatory-positioning - owner: Marvin
- status: deprecated
- start-date:
- end-date:
Description
Prepare an internal reference document that outlines how Nescience aligns with general regulatory expectations. The document should synthesize core protocol principles with relevant considerations and include a brief rationale for how NSSA avoids classification under certain regulatory categories.
Deliverables
- A notion doc to the Nescience notion workspace.
Nomos Deep Dive
- fully qualified name:
vac:acz:nes:2025q3-nescience-consulting:nomos-deep-dive - owner: Marvin
- status: started (90%)
- start-date: 2025/07/31
- end-date: 2025/08/08
Description
Nescience’s architecture is designed to function as a L1 and as a L2. Nomos’ infrastructure is designed to allow a network in blockchains to exist in a single ecosystem sharing the same storage (and in some instances, the same consensus). Nomos supports application-specific blockchains in two ways: zones and sovereign rollups. In this task, we deep dive into Nomos’ infrastructure to determine the best fit and potential changes for NSSA’s deployment in Nomos.
Deliverables:
A document that:
- provides an overview of Nomos infrastructure
- provides an overview of Zone and sovereign rollup requirements
- Conclusion on the best fit for NSSA in Nomos
Specs compatibility
- fully qualified name:
vac:acz:nes:2025q3-nescience-consulting:specs-compat - owner: Marvin
- status: not started
- start-date:
- end-date:
Description
Nescience’s architecture has been specified for NSSAv.01 and portions implemented within Q3. This task, ACZ will examine the compatibility of the specifications and implementation. Additionally, will audit the specifications and implementations for any potential vulnerabilities.
Deliverables:
A document that:
- provides a brief security analysis of specifications
- notes on any differences between code and specifications
- examination of theoretical attack models against specifications
- examination of attacks against code implementation