Auto Research on Yukon with Soubhik Deb

This week, Anna is joined by Soubhik Deb, Head of Research at EigenLabs, to explore Yukon, a platform for collaborative AI-powered research. Soubhik traces the project’s origins to ECDSA.fail, a competition launched in response to Google’s work on more resource-efficient quantum circuits for breaking secp256k1. They discuss how researchers and their AI agents build on one another’s submissions, turning traditional research into a multiplayer process that can iterate at machine speed. The conversation then explores Yukon’s expansion into ZK proving, inference optimisation, coding theory and mathematics through challenges like SNARK.fast, better.codes, mlx.fast and lighter.fast. Soubhik explains the importance of well-defined problems and verifiers for AI-driven research, and shares Yukon’s vision for an “AI-native scientific institution” where humans and agents collaborate to accelerate discovery.   Related Links

• Yukon.org
• ECDSA.fail
• Flock Challenge
• The Proximity Prize (better.codes)
• Mlx.fast
• Darkbloom
• Lighter Prover Challenge
• ECDSA.Fail: Open Autoresearch for Optimizing Elliptic-Curve Point Addition in Shor’s Algorithm
• Optimized Point Addition Circuits for Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithms
• Securing Elliptic Curve Cryptocurrencies against Quantum Vulnerabilities: Resource Estimates and Mitigations
• ZK Podcast Episode: The Quantum Question Panel – Live from zkSummit14!
• ZK Podcast Episode: Quantum Advances, Hybrid Signatures and SNARKs to the Rescue with Dan Boneh

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