Navigators Season 3 - Request for Start-ups

Season 3 of Navigators is back! To apply for a Navigators grant, click here.

As Evan laid out in his recent blog, “Looking Towards 2025,” Navigator grants will be focused on three areas throughout the year:

1. “Feeding the Proof” by onboarding provable data sources & applications
2. Use cases for verifiable compute
3. Infrastructure Improvements (Protokit, o1js, Proof Conversion)

Navigators program will be directing funding towards these three categories. However, grant applications will remain open for all ideas aimed at delivering value to the Mina ecosystem, even if they’re outside of these areas. Let’s dive in.


1. Feeding the proof: Onboarding provable data sources using the Mina Attestations standard

Onboarding diverse data sources in consumer and enterprise applications requires robust mechanisms for proving statements about interactions such as TLS handshakes and email exchanges. Solutions like zkTLS and zkEmail provide succinct, verifiable proofs that attest to the authenticity and integrity of these communications without revealing underlying sensitive data. This approach enhances security and privacy while establishing scalable trust in digital interactions across various platforms.

And when it comes to diverse data sources, we can think about the following data classifications.

  • Web data: Information collected from online interactions—such as TLS handshakes, API responses, or email exchanges—that can be verified without exposing sensitive details.
  • Offline document data: Physical or stored records like contracts or certificates, which can be digitized and attested for authenticity and integrity while preserving privacy.
  • Blockchain state data: On-chain records including transactions, smart contract states, and consensus outcomes, which can be referenced or proven without revealing full transaction details.

zkTLS (also known as ‘zkOracles’)

The web relies on cryptographic algorithms to securely connect and work. The TLS protocol is the solution for connecting clients with servers securely. zkTLS aims to make these connections verifiable by generating proofs for TLS handshakes between servers and clients.

Currently there are different approaches to make TLS verifiable and with the Navigators Exploration Team, as the team is analyzing and exploring building blocks such as ChaCha or AES to unlock these different architectures on Mina.

The possible applications on zkTLS are limitless. Here is how it works:

  • When a user visits a website, their browser sends an HTTP request to the server hosting the website. This request is like asking the server, “Please send me the content of this webpage.”
  • When the user logs into the website, TLS ensures that all data exchanged between the client (user) and server is encrypted and secure. However, zkTLS adds a critical layer: proof of data correctness and integrity through zero-knowledge proofs.
  • This way, data that is being relayed between the client and the server becomes verifiable for the out of the world thanks to zkTLS.

Let’s talk about the potential use cases.

(i) Bringing direct Vampire attacks to the web2
The zkTLS protocols allow everyone to prove their data, no matter where it is.
Given that, it can be used to direct marketing campaigns that attract users directly such as offering users on-chain lending by proving their bank credit scores with zk and giving users higher lending amounts, less commission fees, less transaction fees, compared to banks, and so on….

(ii) Making API’s verifiable
One of the hottest narratives these days is on-chain AI agents. The idea of them is simple: they put a (most of them) OpenAI agent into a TEE and let these agents work autonomously. However, there’s a significant challenge: these systems rely on external APIs to interact with the AI agents, but these API interactions are not verifiable on-chain. This means we have no way of ensuring that the behavior observed is purely autonomous or influenced by human intervention. This gap in trust could be bridged by zkTLS to ensure verifiable API interactions. With zkTLS, we can achieve on-chain verifiability of API calls, allowing us to confirm the authenticity of these interactions while maintaining privacy. Project Untitled would be a great fit for AI agents to have verifiable shared memory and state. This way, they can work together on more complex tasks thanks to the security and data integrity provided by ZK. o(1)labs CEO, Brandon Kase talked about this here.

(iii) Verifiable OAuth
Linking an “invisible” wallet with your web2 account for any kind of on-chain use case with a smooth UX since you provide a proof for your access to that web2 account (Google, Facebook, Instagram, Microsoft…). See Sui Features | zkLogin for inspiration.

Why Mina?

So, the summary of the zkTLS is if “any” product needs verifiable data from the web, then zkTLS allows the porting of the data from any website. The data becomes verifiable, and sometimes this data needs a place to be verified on-chain.

Mina is a good solution for this since it has a ZK-native architecture with no variable gas fees for proof verification, infinite recursion, and o1Labs is working on folding schemes for faster native proving.

Additionally, thanks to Mina’s succinctness, users can send their own proofs to the blockchain without the need of any 3rd party RPC authority, enabling true decentralization in the zkTLS world.

Building on existing solutions

ZKON has built a Mina-native solution for zkTLS. Program will also be looking to fund use cases leveraging ZKON’s underlying infrastructure. You can read more about building on ZKON here.

We will also be looking to fund new zkTLS solutions and architectures using Mina, as well as support integrations with existing zkTLS projects (proving with o1js / Kimchi).


2. Use cases for verifiable compute

In addition to ‘feeding the proof’ with data, the program will be focused on building our verifiable application layer to support scalable, decentralized applications with censorship resistance and liveness guarantees.

There are many projects already fulfilling this vision, and the program will be looking to allocate additional funding towards projects that are bringing new users into the Mina ecosystem.

Here is a list of categories and projects that we’re currently excited about:

(i) Anonymous & censorship-resistant voting
Mina’s zk-proof system, combined with true decentralization enabled by succinct blockchain technology and web nodes, provides a foundation for verifiable and private voting technologies. These technologies ensure the privacy of voting participants while promoting decentralized decision-making and enhancing democratic participation.

  • zkVot: Decentralized and private voting with a modular and flexible design, can be adapted to different domains and use cases.

(ii) Auditable social media
By using Mina’s succinct blockchain, social media platforms can provide users with tamper-proof content and auditable proof of interactions for accountability.
Wrdhom: Auditable social media platform where users get auditable and customizable feeds, free of censorship or content manipulation like artificial boosting or deboosting of certain content or accounts, and black-box moderation systems.

(iii) Attestations of Assets
Mina enables secure, decentralized asset attestation through verifiable proofs, making it ideal for applications requiring trustless validation of ownership and value.

  • zkProver Engine: Bridges the Customer Service ERP on the side of Internal and External Parties that need to interact with their real-world assets through business objects and the Verification App on the End User’s end that verifies proofs about transactions with such business objects.
  • ZkPret: Provides business infrastructure capabilities to real-world tokenization ZK business applications addressing privacy concerns
  • Revl.tech: A platform to auction NFTs.
  • MinaNFT: NFT platform integrates the unique privacy features of the Mina
  • Mirae Assets: Mirae Asset Financial Group utilizes a private ledger, to manage customer data and publish STOs and transactions. Their solution uses Mina’s technology to securely commit tokenized securities data, enabling asset owners to claim proof of ownership without compromising privacy.

(iv) Gaming
Mina enhances gaming by providing scalable, verifiable environments that ensure fairness, asset ownership, and transparency in in-game economies.
zkNoid: A game platform where all the game interactions are reproducible in the ZK circuit and can be proved without revealing the player’s strategy.
TileVille: Verifiable on-chain strategic city development game

(v) Identity
Mina supports identity solutions that preserve privacy while enabling verification, critical for secure and censorship-resistant identity management.

  • zkPassport: An identity verification solution for verifying Passport details using ZK that could be used for compliance, KYC, proof of humanity, and more.
  • zkKYC: A solution concept for verifying users in a privacy-preserving way and leveraging self-sovereign identity.
  • zkEmail: The ZK Email Verifier in o1js is built upon several key packages including ZK RegEx circuit compiler, RSA signature verification, Base64 encoding/decoding, dynamic and partial SHA256.

(vi) DeFi
Mina’s succinct and efficient blockchain enables DeFi applications with verifiable transactions.

  • DinoDex: A decentralized exchange enabling fast, secure, and private trading
  • zkUSD: Aims to explore the feasibility of developing a private, algorithmic stablecoin on the Mina Protocol.

If you have a novel start-up idea leveraging verifiable data and computation, we’d love to hear from you.


3. Infrastructure Improvements

In addition to the ongoing work to scale the core protocol + tooling (see: Roadmap from o1Labs, o1js, Protokit, Rust (web) node, the program will be focusing on funding projects that unlock new functionality to developers in the Mina ecosystem.

(i) Primitives for o1js
To provide a better infrastructure for the developer community, we will encourage contributors to develop primitives for o1js, whether by publishing npm packages or directly submitting pull requests to the o1js codebase. This includes primitives like digital signatures, encryption, data structures, and hash functions. Such contributions ensure that valuable submissions from grantees can be leveraged by everyone, ultimately enhancing the infrastructure available for building protocols and applications. By fostering an open and collaborative environment, we aim to accelerate innovation and make it easier for developers to create robust, scalable solutions.

(ii) Proof Conversion Architectures
Mina is mainly built on the kimchi-proof system, which has several advantages. However, some applications might require other proof systems as well. For example, most of the existing zkVM (zero knowledge virtual machines) require groth16 proof verification. This is what proof conversion architectures solve. They allow any ZK proof to be settled on Mina, the blockchain verifiable from every device.

The o1js-blobstream project (built by Geometry Research) extends this concept by enabling Mina contracts to reference arbitrary data published on Celestia through SP1 proofs of blob inclusion and consensus verification. By compressing these proofs into a single o1js proof, it addresses the challenges of limited state and cross-proof compatibility, facilitating seamless integration with diverse proof systems like Groth16 and PLONK

Now that the Groth16 + PLONK proof systems and their variants are verifiable with o1js, the program will be looking to fund additional research and work related to proof conversion architectures and their use cases, such as state bridges.

(iii) State Bridges
State bridges allow any blockchain’s state to be verified in Mina, the state can contain anything - account data, actions, authentication details, and so on. This enables cross-chain applications in a trust-minimized way. State bridges enable the verification of any blockchain’s state within Mina, allowing for the transfer and synchronisation of entire states or specific segments of state data.

Unlike simpler bridges that typically handle only the transfer of specific assets, such as tokens, state bridges support more extensive interactions by facilitating the movement and verification of not just assets but also smart contract states, account data, authentication details, and more. This enables cross-chain communication in a trust-minimised way.

A good example of this is Nori, which is utilizing the o1js-blobstream project to build a trust-minimized state bridge from Ethereum to Mina (in addition to the existing token bridge). Nori runs Helios, an Ethereum light client, inside a zero-knowledge virtual machine. This process generates a PLONK proof containing the Ethereum state root hash and slot height. The PLONK proof is converted into a Kimchi proof, aligning it with Mina’s proof system. The Kimchi proof is submitted to a smart contract (zkApp) on Mina, which verifies its correctness. Upon successful verification, the Ethereum state root hash and latest slot height are updated on Mina. Reach out to zkKirol on Discord for more information about Nori.

Navigators program is looking to fund projects similar to Nori, alongside novel proof conversion architectures to work with Kimchi and o1js.

Another idea is to integrate existing applications that are leveraging zk-enabled state bridges for their use cases. A good example of this is integrating Hyperlane’s mailbox. Integrating Hyperlane mailbox contracts on Mina would enable interoperability with over 50+ projects, including Citrea, Solana, and more.

Hyperlane supports non-EVM projects and actively collaborates with ecosystem-specific teams for Mailbox implementation. For instance, the PragmaOracle team is currently working on this for StarkNet.

When it comes to security, it offers a modular architecture for interoperability security. You can build your own interchain security module (such as SP1-Helios), use the Hyperlane validator network, or even set up your own validator network.

Navigators program is interested in to fund state bridge integrations, such as HyperLane Mailbox.

(iv) Aligned Layer
Aligned is a ZK verification and aggregation layer that verifies ZK proofs and writes the results to Ethereum. It reduces the verification costs to verify ZK proofs on Ethereum, but also enables some other ZK proof schemes, like Kimchi, to be verified on Ethereum which is not possible normally due to computational limits. Since the latest Mina state is a Kimchi proof, the Aligned Layer bridge enables you to verify Mina’s state on Ethereum.

The Aligned team has built a ‘proof of concept’ token bridge using the underlying proof conversion infrastructure, which you can find here.

Navigators program is interested in funding projects to use the Aligned Layer infrastructure to build and operate a Mina → Ethereum state bridge, and other use cases utilizing Kimchi proofs.


Overall, Navigators Season 3 offers an exciting opportunity to push the boundaries of zero knowledge technology by supporting projects and teams that contribute to Mina’s growing ecosystem. From onboarding provable data sources and exploring verifiable compute to enhancing infrastructure and creating state bridges, these focus areas are targeted to help new privacy-preserving, verifiable and decentralized applications come to life. Whether your project aligns with these focus areas or presents a novel idea outside of them, we encourage you to apply for a grant and become part of Mina’s journey toward building a more secure and efficient web!

You can apply here until the end of Season 3, which is 31st June, 2025. Let’s continue to build the future of ‘httpz’ together!

Navigators Program Team :purple_heart:

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Thank you for this exciting opportunity! I believe AI agents can bring valuable contributions to Mina’s ecosystem, especially in enhancing usability and automation. I’m currently working on projects in this field and look forward to exploring potential collaborations with the program.

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