Protocol Snarkification Intern

About the Ethereum Foundation

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) is a global non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Ethereum and related technologies. Our mission is to do what is best for Ethereum’s long-term success. Our role is to allocate resources to critical projects, to be a valued voice within the Ethereum ecosystem, and to advocate for Ethereum to the outside world.

EF Internship

As part of our mission to advance blockchain systems, interns will contribute to bleeding edge research that spans computer science, distributed systems, crypto-economics, and mechanism design. This program offers a unique opportunity to work closely with Ethereum Foundation researchers, their collaborators, and other contributors across the ecosystem, tackling both foundational and applied research challenges. Interns will also have opportunities to share their findings through ethresear.ch, academic publications, or conference submissions helping shape the future of Ethereum.

Interns can choose to work remotely but are encouraged to work out of an EF office (likely Berlin, Germany). In addition, interns will be invited for an in-person cohort meetup in the summer.

The duration of the internship is 12 weeks during summer 2026.

Protocol Snarkification team description

The Protocol Snarkification is a research team dedicated to snarkifying the Ethereum protocol, alongside the Cryptography and zkEVM teams. In particular, the team has a focus on formal verification applied to cryptographic protocols and their implementations.

The team currently handles the verified-zkevm.org effort to formally verify zkVMs, which oversees the formal verification of zkVM circuits, the EVM implementation that is used on zkVMs, and developing formal executable specifications alongside formalized security proofs for the proof systems used by zkVMs, and will be growing our internal capacity along these lines as the team grows.

Resources: https://verified-zkevm.org/

More on the EF Protocol cluster: https://protocol.ethereum.foundation/

• Experience with Lean (or another proof assistant)
• Knowledge of Rust and implementations of cryptography in Rust may also be helpful depending on specific projects
• Being comfortable with the mathematics underlying SNARKS (coding theory, linear algebra, ...) and formalism
• Knowledge of proof systems used in in zkVMs

• Conduct original research in areas relevant to Ethereum and decentralized technologies.
• Collaborate with Ethereum Foundation researchers and contributors to address pressing technical and conceptual challenges.
• Contribute to public-facing materials, such as blog posts, white papers, and technical reports, to share research outcomes.
• Engage with the broader research community through discussions, seminars, and collaborations.

• Current university enrollment studying a relevant field such as computer science, cryptography, mathematics, or economics. Very recent graduates (~1 year) may also be considered.
• Demonstrated interest in Ethereum, blockchains, and decentralized technologies.

Important dates:

This application closes on Dec 1st, 2025. Applicants will receive decisions by January 30th, 2026.

Note on AI-assisted review:

The hiring team will use an AI-assisted tool to help us review resumes for this role. Here’s what that means:

- Your resume is anonymized before the AI review.

- We have been assured that your information will not be used to train AI models.

- Human reviewers make all final decisions. The AI tool does not reject or advance candidates automatically.

- The tool simply helps the hiring team manage a large volume of applications by highlighting potential fits.

If you’d like to know more about how the tool works, you can read the Talent Fit AI Brief.