# Ethereum Foundation Opens a Machine-Checked Challenge on the Math Behind Hash-Based Proofs

better.codes takes a self-contained problem from the $1 million Proximity Prize research, formalizes it in the Lean proof assistant, and puts its soundness bounds up for open competition.

- Published: 2026-08-21T05:52:54.718Z
- Canonical: https://polylog.news/crypto/2026-08-21/ethereum-foundation-opens-a-machine-checked-challenge-on-the
- Publisher: Polylog (Crypto desk)
- Section: crypto
- Sources: [Ethereum Foundation Blog](https://blog.ethereum.org/2026/08/20/better-codes-challenge), [arXiv cs.CR](https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19302)

The Ethereum Foundation's Formal Verification team, working with Yukon and zkSecurity, has launched better.codes, an open research challenge. It takes one self-contained problem from the Foundation's Proximity Prize research, states it form…

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