Shankara specializes in blockchain security audits in various verticals.
He has conducted academic research in zero-knowledge proofs, program analysis, fuzzing, and file systems (crash-consistency bugs), among others.
In addition to his academic accomplishments, Shankara brings years of software engineering experience from the medical device and travel industries.
Shankara earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.Sc. from Columbia University, and a B.S. from the University of Chicago.
At Veridise, Shankara serves as a lead ZK auditor, with extensive experience in auditing industry-leading protocols in the ZK space.
Experience overview
Experience
C++, Cairo, Circom, Rust, Solidity, Solana, Substrate, arkworks, Gnark, Halo2, plonky2x, plonky3
Specialities
Smart Contracts, Infrastructure, Zero Knowledge, Cryptography
Previous work
Academic work
- {MoonShine}: Optimizing {OS} fuzzer seed selection with trace distillation
- Automated detection of under-constrained circuits in zero-knowledge proofs,
- Practical Security Analysis of Zero-Knowledge Proof Circuits.
- Optimization and abstraction: a synergistic approach for analyzing neural network robustness, G Anderson, S Pailoor, I Dillig, S Chaudhuri
- Shankara’s academic research on Google scholar
Full audit reports
- Ankr protocol, 17 Feb 2023, token staking protocol
- MakerDAO, 4 Feb 2023, review security of Multi Colleteral Dai Protocol for StarkNet
- Semaphore, 5 Jan 2023, security review of Groups v3
- Manta Network, 1 Sep 2022, Manta Chain (blockchain implementation)
- Parallel, 7 Jun 2022, security review of Parallel’s OMNI Money Market Protocol
Conference presentations
Shankara has delivered presentations at numerous conferences
Picus: Push button ZK Circuit verification
17 min | ETH CC 2023
Automatically detecting under constrained zkCircuits with Picus
18 min | ZK House Bogotá 2022
Optimizing OS Fuzzer Seed Selection with Trace Distillation
23 min | Usenix Security 2018