Live from TOKEN2049: Telos Announces Ethereum Layer 2 Partnership with Ponos Technology

Telos has detailed its new partnership with Ponos Technology to develop a hardware-accelerated Ethereum L2 zkEVM network Plans for the new network were revealed live today at TOKEN2049 in Dubai. crypto events, bringing together 10,000 participants from 4,000 companies and 100 countries to explore the future of crypto

The Telos Foundation has detailed a new partnership with Ponos Technology, a leading zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) research and development company, that will enable the two companies to jointly develop an end-to-end optimized, hardware-accelerated Ethereum layer. 2 Network SNARKtor, a decentralized recursive authentication aggregator developed by Telos.

The new partnership was announced today at TOKEN2049 in Dubai, one of the world's premier crypto conferences.

Teams from Telos and Ponos Technologies will take a hardware-software co-design approach that will help unlock new opportunities for Ethereum users worldwide, including massive scalability, greater data protection and trustless interoperability.

Ponos Technology provides end-to-end optimized solutions for ZK verification, primarily by leveraging FPGA acceleration for cost-performance-optimized computation of business value streams by matching hardware-software embedded modules and dedicated execution environments. The team consists of experienced scientists and highly skilled industry professionals who have accumulated deep technical knowledge on all aspects of ZKPs.

Slobodan Lukovic, CEO and Co-Founder, Ponos Technology;

“Zero-Knowledge Technology is becoming increasingly mainstream and will open the door to efficiency and security for many industries.

“Similarly, improvements in AI-related algorithms combined with the underlying hardware infrastructure will enable the deployment of ZKPs and the widespread adoption of the technology in the near future.”

Telos will work with other new partners during the development cycle:

Digital MOB – is one of the strongest Ethereum development teams in the world, has worked on projects including MetaMask, MakerDAO and Gnosis, among others.
ATKA – a Paris-based end-to-end Web3 incubator that has helped invent world-class projects such as Morpho and Mangrove, and announced its strategic partnership with Telos in March 2024.
Cometh – an award-winning dev team led by ETH France President Jérôme de Taichey joined Telos as a technical EVM consultant in March 2024.

In addition to being a Top 50 Web3 angel investor, Telos CEO John Lillick, who helped lead pioneering teams at ConsenSys and Polygon, will help coordinate and support the transition. He works closely with Alberto Garofolo, head of ZK technology at Telos and co-author SNARKtor white paperand Jesse Schulman, CTO and head of engineering at Telos.

Announcing the new partnership, John Lillick said:

“Fundamentally, Ethereum needs to take a hardware-software co-design approach to realize zkEVM performance at a high level.

That's the approach we're taking with Ponos technology and our growing partner network as we build hardware-accelerated zkEVM L2. We believe this formula will provide compelling services to the Ethereum community and beyond, alongside the exciting work our team is doing with frequent proofs through SNARKtor.

Telos was created in 2018 as a “fair drop” network startup that did not involve an ICO or token sale. Over the past six years, the Telos Foundation has helped lead two major networks — Telos EVM and Telos Zero — and now focuses on building high-performance, short-proven L2 zkEVM.

Following on from TOKEN2049, further details on Telos L2 are expected to be revealed in July leading up to EthCC, of ​​which Telos is the main sponsor. Live from EthCC in Brussels, the Telos team plans to broadcast the SNARKtor demo to the world ahead of the Telos L2 official launch.