The 8th Advanced School on Cryptology and Information Security in Latin America (ASCrypto) will be co-located with LatinCrypt 2025, taking place on September 29–30, 2025 in Medellín, Colombia.



Call for Stipends!!!!

Thanks to our sponsors, we have the opportunity to give financial support to students that would not be able to attend the workshop otherwise. If it is your case, please fill out this form First deadline is July the 11th!

See also the Call for posters at Latincrypt

Topic: Modern Proof Systems

This year’s edition of ASCrypto will focus on advanced topics in modern proving systems, including recursion, STARKs, and MPC-in-the-head. These areas are gaining significant traction in both theoretical research and practical applications.

Confirmed Speakers

Alan Szepieniec
Neptune Cash
Alan Szepieniec is a cryptography researcher and entrepreneur based in Switzerland. After obtaining a PhD in post-quantum cryptography from KU Leuven, he founded cryptograpy research lab AS Discrete Mathematics, which did contract work for Nervos Foundation and Ethereum Foundation, among others. In 2021 he co-founded the Neptune Cash cryptocurrency project which features zk-STARKs on Layer-1, and which launched its mainnet in February of 2025.
Benedikt Bünz
New York University
Benedikt Bünz is an assistant professor at NYU. He works on cryptography, with a focus on protocols that have applications to blockchains. He has invented several wildly deployed primitives and protocols including Bulletproofs, VDFs and accumulation schemes. He is also the cofounder and chief scientist of Espresso Systems.
Sophia Yakoubov
Aarhus University
Sophia Yakoubov is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Aarhus University, specializing in cryptography, with a Ph.D. from Boston University and prior experience as a cryptographer at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

Chairs

  • Arantxa Zapico, Cryptography Researcher, Ethereum Foundation
  • Javier Verbel, Cryptography Researcher, Technology Innovation Institute

Venue

Universidad EAFIT
Carrera 49 #7 Sur 50, El Poblado, Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia

View on Google Maps

Registration Cost: 20 USD.

Program

All times are in GMT-5 (Colombian time).

Monday, September 29

Time Event Speaker
08:30 – 09:00Welcome
09:00 – 10:30 Introduction to Proof Systems Arantxa Zapico
Ethereum Foundation
10:30 – 11:00Coffee Break
11:00 – 12:30 Folding and Accumulation schemes Benedikt Bünz
New York University
12:30 – 14:00Lunch Break
14:00 – 15:30 Introduction to zk-STARKs Alan Szepieniec
Neptune Cash
15:30 – 16:00Coffee Break
16:00 – 17:30 Secure Multiparty Computation and its applications to Zero Knowledge Proofs Sophia Yakoubov
Aarhus University

Tuesday, September 30

Time Event Speaker
09:00 – 10:30 Folding and Accumulation schemes Benedikt Bünz
New York University
10:30 – 11:00Coffee Break
11:00 – 12:30 Introduction to zk-STARKs Alan Szepieniec
Neptune Cash
12:30 – 14:00Lunch Break
14:00 – 15:30 Secure Multiparty Computation and its applications to Zero Knowledge Proofs Sophia Yakoubov
Aarhus University
15:30 – 16:00Coffee Break
16:00 – 17:30Q&A and Practical Session