{
  "type": "option",
  "name": "Coordinatorless and on-chain ceremonies",
  "slug": "coordinatorless-ceremonies",
  "section": {
    "id": "ceremony",
    "number": "04",
    "title": "Running or reusing a trusted setup",
    "url": "https://zkpick.com/ceremony/"
  },
  "url": "https://zkpick.com/ceremony/coordinatorless-ceremonies/",
  "markdown": "https://zkpick.com/md/ceremony/coordinatorless-ceremonies.md",
  "category": "Ceremony design (research)",
  "summary": "Coordinatorless and on-chain ceremonies: Ceremony design (research). Protocols that remove the central coordinator by running contribution and verification through a smart contract or consensus layer, making eligibility and ordering publicly auditable by construction. Maturity: Research with prototypes. Maintained by: Academic authors (Powers-of-Tau to the People; a16z crypto research on-chain ceremony prototype). Choose it when: Projects where censorship-resistance of the ceremony itself is a stated requirement, or teams assessing where the field is heading.",
  "description": "Protocols that remove the central coordinator by running contribution and verification through a smart contract or consensus layer, making eligibility and ordering publicly auditable by construction.",
  "notes": [],
  "sections": [],
  "strengths": [
    "Removes coordinator censorship and single-point liveness failure — a property no surveyed production ceremony satisfies",
    "Contribution eligibility and ordering become publicly auditable",
    "Opens the door to explicit incentives for honest participation"
  ],
  "tradeoffs": [
    "Gas and data-availability costs scale with SRS size; large SRSs remain impractical fully on-chain",
    "Still synchronous and round-robin; fully asynchronous ceremonies remain an open problem",
    "Limited deployment track record — treat as research-grade for now"
  ],
  "bestFit": "Projects where censorship-resistance of the ceremony itself is a stated requirement, or teams assessing where the field is heading.",
  "maintainers": "Academic authors (Powers-of-Tau to the People; a16z crypto research on-chain ceremony prototype)",
  "maturity": "Research with prototypes",
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "source": "https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1592",
  "facts": [],
  "relatedFailureModes": [],
  "sources": [
    {
      "title": "Powers-of-Tau to the People: decentralising setup ceremonies",
      "url": "https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1592",
      "kind": "paper"
    }
  ],
  "updated": "2026-09-12",
  "version": "1.3",
  "canonical": "https://zkpick.com/ceremony/coordinatorless-ceremonies/",
  "authors": [
    "MarketComp"
  ]
}