The project is a collaboration between the Zcash cofounder and organizations including Eigen Labs, Shielded Labs, and Project Eleven. Sreeram Kannan of Yukon stated the open research challenge was created because AI methods are increasingly capable of breaking cybersecurity. The participants will test if foundational cryptographic schemes that protect the internet remain secure against evolving AI models.
Wednesday, October 21, 2026
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Zcash Cofounder Launches AI Race to Crack Foundational Cryptographic Hashes
Cybersecurity16 days ago
Zooko Wilcox has partnered with Yukon Research and other labs to crowdsource attacks on the mathematical functions used in current and post-quantum cryptography. The new initiative, called HashSmash, invites participants to use artificial intelligence agents and mathematical expertise to identify vulnerabilities in hashing schemes including SHA-256, SHA-3, and BLAKE3. Multiple users attempted to challenge the security of SHA-3 and BLAKE3 within 23 minutes of the project going live.
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