As the Community Grows: Announcing the 2024 Edition of the o1Labs Partner Program

Written by Phil Kelly, Head of Business Development

In the recently released Electric Capital report on crypto developers, we saw a positive growth trend in developers joining the space. Notably, Mina Protocol proudly stands as the second-fastest-growing ecosystem by the number of full-time developers. This growth, especially in an industry where some projects face challenges and fluctuations in developer contributions, is a testament to the resilience and vitality of the Mina Protocol and the user-friendly onboarding of our zk SDK, o1js. What makes this achievement particularly significant is the positive signal it sends for the broader adoption of zero knowledge technology — a cause we are deeply passionate about and committed to.

Building on this momentum, we are excited to unveil the latest edition of the o1Labs Partner Program — an initiative that aligns seamlessly with our mission to advance zero knowledge applications (zkApps) using o1js. In 2023, we welcomed partners exploring zk in gaming, proof of liabilities, digital identity, and more.

The o1Labs Partner Program not only provides a conducive environment for rigorous testing and valuable feedback on o1js, but also serves as a bridge to connect us with visionary partners exploring the vast potential of zero knowledge. It is in this spirit of collaboration that we welcome another eight companies.

About our new Partners:

• Guardian Labs is at the forefront of programmable blockchain infrastructure for games and on-chain finance, providing no/low code composable and enforceable NFT renting and lending solutions to enable new economic monetisation strategies and business models. They will be exploring the use of o1js for privacy-preserving smart contracts for gaming.
• Collab.Land is a full-service community management tool that curates membership based on token ownership. They will be exploring privacy-preserving statements of identity for gated access to social venues.
• PUNKPOLL is a decentralized platform for voting and public opinion surveys that anyone, anywhere in the world, can easily participate in and create. They are working on a capability to use zk for verifiable, private, off-chain voting.
• Ape.Bond is a multi-chain bonding protocol committed to building a sustainable DeFi future for projects and communities. They are exploring zk to support DeFi through privacy-preserving financial audits & KYC.
• Sidestream provides Web3 software development, including smart contract development and auditing, as well as frontend development and dev tooling. They are currently exploring the Mina ecosystem to streamline the adoption of zkProofs for identity verification (e.g. age) based on the German national identity system.
• Race Protocol builds a fast, easy, and serverless solution for developing blockchain-native decentralized games. They will be exploring options for using off-chain verifiable computation in their stack.
• DSID builds tech that turns your wallet account into a super account. Attach contextual reputation scores to your address, and apps will treat you better. DSID will be exploring privacy-preserving statements of identity for credit scoring and other credential modeling.
• Next.ID offers a Universal Profile SDK to connect users across Web2 and Web3. They will be exploring ZK for email attestation and oracles.

Unlocking Potential with Our Partners

This year, we are particularly excited for our partners and their exploration because of the recent performance boosts and features that have been enabled in o1js. From Keccak and ECDSA for Ethereum compatibility to performance improvements like prover key caching, our team is always busy at work building what developers need. o1js now also supports the cryptographic hash function SHA-256. This opens the door for zkApps to work with a much wider range of data, including from more traditional sources such as passports, data-integrity checks, Web2 logins and authentication systems, and more! All in parallel to the work that o1Labs is doing to bring zkApps to Mina Mainnet with the upcoming Berkeley upgrade.

We are excited to see what our partners will do with these new features and the potential that they will unlock through their testing and trialing. It’s going to be an exciting year for zk, be sure to stay tuned!

Interested in Getting Involved?

While we are not accepting additional partners for this edition, we are always setting the stage for future partnerships. We are open to applications from innovative projects who are planning to build zkApps. If this sounds like you, please reach out to us at partners@o1labs.org to explore!