December 2025 Summaries

Recent research at Zama resulted in three significant papers presented at ASIACRYPT 2025, focusing on advancements in cryptographic techniques and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). The first paper introduces anamorphic signatures, which enable covert communication within digital signatures, ensuring privacy even in environments that ban encryption, by embedding undetectable messages that maintain both dictator and recipient unforgeability. The second paper addresses the efficiency of bootstrapping in fully homomorphic encryption, introducing a new primitive that merges multiple operations into a single, more efficient one, thereby reducing computation time and noise growth and offering improved blind rotation algorithms with flexible trade-offs. The third paper proposes Sorted Bootstrapping (SBS) for TFHE, which optimizes the bootstrapping process by identifying and eliminating unnecessary external products during blind rotation, resulting in significant performance gains and speedups compared to traditional and EBS-based bootstrapping methods, supported by extensive benchmarks and experimental results.

The Decentralized Key Generation (DKG) ceremony for the Zama mainnet successfully concluded, involving 13 independent parties who jointly executed an advanced cryptographic protocol to generate the public encryption key for the Zama Confidential Blockchain mainnet. This process ensured that the private key remained secret-shared among participants, preventing any single entity from accessing it fully. The MPC protocol, designed to maintain performance akin to non-decentralized Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) systems, overcame challenges associated with decentralized key generation, such as participant dropouts or malicious actions, by achieving robustness against up to four offline or disruptive operators. This accomplishment marked the largest robust MPC protocol executed in a production environment, utilizing AWS Nitro Enclaves and Hardware Security Modules for enhanced security. The successful completion of the DKG is a significant step towards bringing FHE into production, with Zama poised to launch its mainnet shortly.

Zama's Developer Program is actively fostering the development and adoption of the Fully Homomorphic Encryption Virtual Machine (FHEVM) by engaging developers in building applications that demonstrate the technology's potential. With the recent launch of Zama Testnet V2, the initiative is progressing toward the Mainnet phase, set to commence soon. Developers are encouraged to join the program before Mainnet launch in order to refine their applications, validate use cases, and gain a competitive edge. The program is becoming increasingly competitive, with prototypes evolving into fully functional applications, highlighting the growing maturity and quality of submissions. Early participants have the opportunity to influence industry standards and gain significant visibility, support, and rewards, including a share of $10,000 in prizes and the Zama OG NFT. December marks a crucial period for developers to experiment with the technical stack and secure their status as early builders in the FHE ecosystem, with opportunities to contribute to the community through the Builder and Bounty Tracks.

Season 5 marks a pivotal moment for the Zama Creator Program, transitioning from its nascent stage into a significant force within the blockchain privacy space, highlighted by the widespread acceptance of Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) as a core blockchain concept. Launched in July 2025 to identify forward-thinking individuals and collaboratively build narratives, the program has exceeded expectations, becoming one of the largest ecosystems of its kind with substantial global engagement and impact. Creators have driven the conversation on FHE across a diverse array of languages, contributing to over 281 million impressions and more than 34,000 posts, while earning Zama OG NFTs and financial rewards for high-quality content. Season 5, the final opportunity to join as a foundational member or "OG," offers creators the chance to secure the last 1,006 OG NFTs through a competitive leaderboard, with additional incentives like a $50,000 monthly prize pool and a special Creator’s Choice Award. As the program evolves, it continues to foster a global community committed to advancing the dialogue around privacy and blockchain innovations.

The Zama Bounty Program is designed to engage developers in enhancing the Zama Confidential Blockchain Protocol by addressing specific challenges each season, with the current focus on creating standalone, Hardhat-based FHEVM example repositories. Developers are tasked with building repositories that clearly demonstrate concepts like access control and user decryption, complete with clean tests, automated scaffolding, and comprehensive documentation. The program offers a $10,000 prize pool, with a submission deadline set for December 31, 2025, and encourages participants to produce well-structured projects using TypeScript-based CLI tools and Solidity contracts. Judging criteria include code quality, automation completeness, example quality, and documentation, with bonus points awarded for creative examples and advanced patterns. Participants must submit a demonstration video showcasing their project's features, and the top three submissions will receive monetary rewards. The initiative also provides several reference repositories and resources to aid developers in their contributions to the privacy-preserving smart contracts leveraging Fully Homomorphic Encryption.

Launching a protocol involves the strategic distribution and pricing of its token, and after examining numerous token generation events (TGEs), auctions have been identified as the most effective method for achieving fair distribution, price discovery, and capital efficiency. Zama plans to sell 12% of its $ZAMA token supply through public sales, including a sealed-bid Dutch auction, which keeps bids confidential and allows participants to purchase tokens at a fair price. Dutch auctions, historically used for various high-profile sales, set the clearing price at the lowest bid that gets filled, enhancing price accuracy and distribution fairness. The auction, running from January 21-24, will be conducted on Ethereum mainnet using Zama's technology, which adds confidentiality to existing blockchains through Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). The $ZAMA token, vital for the protocol, facilitates encryption and decryption transactions, and the auction's confidentiality aims to prevent bid manipulation. The auction will involve four phases: shielding stablecoins, placing bids, determining the clearing price, and claiming tokens. The auction's unique format seeks to enhance distribution quality over maximizing financial metrics, with various incentives provided to participants.