Provenant Research focuses on tech that enables humans to interact verifiably. We think that clear data provenance (knowing the origin of data) is critical for such verification – settling for intermediary “attestations” from centralized providers inherently undercuts the premise of decentralization. Unfortunately, data verified not at the origin but by a non-transparent trusted attester is the only verification style that exists in production in the zk space right now.

We support projects that provide more privacy and intimacy in our internet lives, either by securely storing and selectively revealing personal data. We also support projects that improve the experience interacting with data availability layers like Ethereum and IPFS. Specific projects incubated in-house or directly mentored are:

  • NFC Stamps: Proofs of signatures from NFC cards enable verifiable physical interactions. Originally developed at Zuzalu, based on related experiments at SBC and Devcon 2022.
  • ZK Email: Proofs of email on-chain enable identity proofs and account abstraction wallets on chain
  • heyanon: Verifiably post as an anonymous member of an on-chain or in-person group
  • Nozee: Proof of ownership of JSON Web Tokens from OpenAI, allowing anyone to prove anonymous membership of an email domain
  • PLUME: Proofs of unique Ethereum identity enable anonymous proof of solvency, anonymous message board reputation + moderation, and zk voting
  • WebAuthn research: Enabling everyone with a browser to generate signatures and Semaphore identities, via ZK proofs of Webauthn credentials
  • Morpheus: Proofs of transformation of generated content proves provenance and origin, including for AI generated content

We will release full blog posts for all of these projects in August 2023. If you’re excited about this future, email team@ivyresearch.org to get in touch. We can give grants for full projects or even small contributions like bug fixes or design critiques, as all of our repositories and issues are public. We are especially excited to hear from traditionally underrepresented groups to ensure that everyone is included in the future of verifiable interactions.

We generally support and want to hear from projects that provide more privacy in our internet lives, either by securely generating or selectively revealing personal cryptographic data. While privacy alone is alienating, we think that the same principles in social interaction can increase intimacy in our interactions, since this can lead people to express their own humanity more fully.

We support projects that improve the onboarding experience to datastores like Ethereum via verifiable identities, allowing advanced cryptography to meaningfully impact real people. All of our work is deeply entwined with in-house cutting edge research, and our code is open-source and MIT licensed. We hope that people who derive profit from our work can contribute back. If you’re excited by advanced cryptography, digital identity where you control your own data, or personable social design, please reach out by Discord: we are especially excited to hear from traditionally underrepresented groups to ensure that everyone is included in the future of digital expression.

Most importantly, to keep the mission pure to the best technology independent of the tools used, we do not accept or distribute money with strings attached. Ambitious grantees set their own deliverables and timelines and are held to them.