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Introducing Ouroboros Phalanx – breaking the economics of grinding attacks

Phalanx aims to enhance Ouroboros with stronger randomness generation, preventing grinding attacks and delivering faster, more reliable transaction settlement

22 October 2025 Kris Bennett 9 mins read

Introducing Ouroboros Phalanx – breaking the economics of grinding attacks

Summary:

  • Ouroboros Phalanx strengthens Cardano’s consensus foundation by addressing a subtle but important vulnerability in randomness generation known as grinding attacks 
  • By introducing verifiable delay functions (VDFs) and extending how randomness is built across epochs, Phalanx makes such attacks exponentially more costly and practically infeasible
  • This upgrade not only…

Unlocking zero-knowledge proofs for Cardano: the Halo2-Plutus verifier

Learn about an open-source prototype bringing zero-knowledge proofs to Cardano for private, scalable, and interoperable applications

26 August 2025 Kris Bennett 6 mins read

Unlocking zero-knowledge proofs for Cardano: the Halo2-Plutus verifier

In the rapidly evolving world of blockchain technology, zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) are a cornerstone for enhancing privacy, scalability, and security. The Halo2-Plutus verifier is an open-source project spearheaded by Input | Output Research (IOR) as part of an Intersect agreement driven by the Technical Steering Committee priorities. This tool bridges the advanced…