Stellar Hacks: Real-World ZK

Stellar Hacks: Real-World ZK is an online hackathon organized by the Stellar Development Foundation, running June 15–29. It challenges builders to bring zero-knowledge cryptography to the Stellar blockchain – with no fixed track, no mandatory framework, and no prescribed use case. Privacy pools, private payments, confidential tokens, identity proofs, verifiable computation – anything where ZK is doing real work on Stellar qualifies.

The hackathon is timed to Stellar's recent protocol upgrades: Protocol 25 introduced native BN254 elliptic-curve operations and Poseidon hashing, and Protocol 26 expanded that with nine additional BN254 host functions, making on-chain ZK proof verification – including Noir proofs – significantly cheaper. Builders generate proofs off-chain using systems like Noir, Circom, or RISC Zero, then deploy verifier contracts on Stellar. Supported frameworks include Noir, RISC Zero, Circom, and Soroban.

Submissions require an open-source repo, a short demo video, and a project where ZK is genuinely load-bearing – not just mentioned in the README. 132 hackers already registered.

Prize pool: $10,000 in XLM — 1st $5,000 / 2nd $2,000 / 3rd $1,250 / 4th $1,000 / 5th $750.

Submissions open: June 15 | Deadline: June 29, 12:00PM PST