Telos Completes Public Ceremony for Next-Generation Privacy Layer
The Telos ecosystem has officially completed its multi-phase Public Ceremony, marking a major milestone toward delivering high-performance, quantum-resilient zero-knowledge (ZK) infrastructure for the Telos Privacy Layer and future zk-powered applications across the network.
Similar in spirit to the early Powers of Tau ceremonies that helped bootstrap today’s ZK ecosystem, the Telos Public Ceremony invited the community to contribute randomness to the network’s proving system. This process ensures that no single party has control over the resulting cryptographic parameters. As with all trust-minimized ceremonies, security increases with each additional participant.
A Ceremony Built on Strong Foundations
The Telos ceremony builds on established cryptographic groundwork, inheriting 86 contributions from the original Perpetual Powers of Tau, which provided a robust and battle-tested foundation for the new setup. On top of this base, Telos conducted its own ceremony across two major phases:
Phase 1
Telos completed four participations, inheriting and extending the original 86 Powers of Tau contributions. This ensured strong, diverse entropy at the base layer of the proving system.
Phase 2
Telos completed five additional participations during the circuit-specific second phase, finalizing high-integrity parameters for the circuits powering the Telos Privacy Layer.
Each participation introduced fresh, irreversible randomness that was immediately destroyed after use. As long as any single participant acted honestly, the final parameters cannot be reconstructed, compromised, or manipulated.
Community Participation
The Telos Public Ceremony was not just a technical milestone—it was a collaborative effort across the Telos ecosystem.
We extend our thanks to the organizations that directly participated in the ceremony and contributed independent entropy to strengthen its decentralization and security:
- Telos Foundation (TF)
- Protofire
- Telos USA
- Telos Unlimited
- Telos Sphere
Their participation reinforced the trust-minimized nature of the setup.
We also acknowledge the many contributors to the original Perpetual Powers of Tau, whose work laid the foundation for this ceremony. That effort included dozens of independent participants from across the cryptography and blockchain ecosystem, including contributors associated with major communities such as Ethereum, Zcash, Filecoin, Consensys, and others.
By inheriting and extending those contributions—while layering on fresh entropy from the Telos community—this ceremony combines proven cryptographic history with new decentralization.
Why the Ceremony Matters
The completion of the Public Ceremony achieves three critical goals for Telos:
1. Trust-Minimized ZK Infrastructure
The ceremony eliminates single points of trust by decentralizing the generation of toxic waste. For privacy systems, this is foundational—any compromise at setup would undermine user confidentiality.
2. Quantum-Resilient, Future-Proof Design
The underlying structure inherited from Powers of Tau, strengthened by Telos’ own contributions, enhances long-term security as cryptographic requirements evolve.
3. Readiness for the Telos Privacy Layer
With parameters finalized, Telos can now proceed with integration, testing, and deployment of its multi-asset, cross-chain privacy system. These parameters underpin private transfers, shielded accounts, private DeFi interactions, and future zk-native features.
A Major Step Toward Decentralized, Private Digital Infrastructure
The completion of the Public Ceremony represents one of the final technical prerequisites for launching the Telos Privacy Layer—a system designed to provide privacy where users need it, while preserving transparency across the broader Telos ecosystem.
With both phases complete and the parameters securely established, Telos is positioned to deliver one of the fastest and most user-friendly privacy systems in the blockchain industry.
What Comes Next
With the Public Ceremony complete, Telos moves forward with integrating and deploying the Telos Privacy Layer, enabling:
- Multi-asset private transactions
- Privacy-preserving account structures
- Cross-chain privacy workflows
All ceremony artifacts and verification materials will be published on launch, allowing anyone to independently verify that the ceremony was performed correctly and that the resulting parameters are in active use.