Future Cryptography Conference 20.05.2026
Digital identity has established itself as a cornerstone of modern societies. We use it to move around our finances and assets, we use it to authenticate for services. Increasingly, we rely on digital signatures instead of ones given on paper.
As the technologies become more commonplace and gain more users, the identity service providers start to gain more and more insights about those users. Especially, when digital credential start to be presented in physical spaces. Before, the identity provider could track which online services a person uses. Once the digital identities are presented at shops, hospitals, borders and more, the identity provider will also know the movements of the person.
Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) are a technology for balancing the privacy and utility in services. Instead of showing a (identity or other) service provider all your data, you can prove that you are in control of them and that they make you eligible for the service.
ZKPs can also revolutionise bureaucracy. We have been attaching/stapling data to our applications to prove that we are healthy enough, rich enough, skilled enough or have been conducting our business according to the applicable rules. What if we could prove to governments or companies that we are healthy, rich, skilled or compliant without showing our full medical history or bank transaction history? Today’s ZKPs are powerful enough to achieve all that – or even prove that your AI has been working properly.
There is potential here! So I am excited to invite you to Future Cryptography 2026, organised by Cyber-Security Excellence Hub in Estonia and South Moravia (Horizon Europe CHESS project), the Estonian Academy of Sciences and Cybernetica.
Dan Bogdanov
Chief Science and Innovation Officer of Cybernetica, Head of the Standing Committee on Cybersecurity of the Estonian Academy of Sciences
TIMETABLE 20.05.2026
9:30
Registration opens
10:00
Zero knowledge is not zero trust – but what is it?
Dan Bogdanov (Cybernetica/Estonian Academy of Sciences)
10:10
Keep It Secret, Keep It Safe: ZK-Proofs in the EU Identity Wallet
Olivier Blazy (École Polytechnique de Paris)
10:40
ZKP in Production Wallets and Tenders: Where EU Standards Meet Real World Constraints
Aivo Kalu (Cybernetica)
11:10
Coffee break
11:30
Constructions and trends in modern zero knowledge proofs
Marek Sys (Assistant Professor at Masaryk University)
12:00
Eight years of production-level zero knowledge proofs in Estonian e-services
Jan Willemson (Senior Researcher at Cybernetica)
12:30
Lunch break
13:15
Zero-knowledge Proofs in Web 3.0
Janno Siim (Lecturer at the University of Tartu)
13:45
Vehicle taxation and subsidies without nation-scale surveillance
Martin Suomalainen (Security Engineer at Cybernetica)
14:15
Coffee break
14:45
Theoretically Sound, Practically Achievable: ZKPs from Multi-Message Signatures for the EUDIW
Søren Eller Thomsen (Senior Cryptographic Engineer at Partisia)
15:15
TBD
TBD
15:45
Closing words
Dan Bogdanov (Cybernetica/Estonian Academy of Sciences)
15:50
Networking
MEET THE SPEAKERS
Dr. Dan Bogdanov leads Cybernetica’s Information Security Research Institute and is the Head of the Standing Committee on Cybersecurity at the Estonian Academy of Sciences. He leads a research team that works on international cybersecurity research projects with US DARPA, US Office of Naval Research, European Defence Fund, Horizon Europe and Estonian agencies. He has worked on information security and cryptography standardisation in the ISO/IEC standards body.
Olivier Blazy is a Professor at Ecole polytechnique in France. He got his PhD at Ecole Normale Supérieure in 2012. He is currently the Scientific director of CIEDS (a multidisciplinary Defense & Security Institute) at IP Paris. His main research interest is cryptography over several fields like digital identity, postquantum cryptography, and societal impact of cryptography.
He was a coauthor the HQC standard for postquantum encryption. He also worked with the french Data Protection Agency (CNIL) to provide a proof of concept for double “anonymous” age verification at the core of french legislation for online age verification, and is an expert for the french official delegation for the european digital identity wallet.
Dr. Aivo Kalu is a leading security engineer with over 20 years of experience in information security, cryptography and digital identity at Cybernetica, company that has been building future-proof technologies that rely on research and development for over 25 years. Cybernerica’s unique expertise ranges from secure data exchange like the X-road to digital identity, i-voting, information security and more. Aivo’s responsibilities include product development and consulting government authorities, trust service providers and other clients about their digital identity programs, authentication, signing, and wallet solutions and applying security protocols, cryptography, standardisation and security certification to client’s problems.
Marek Sýs is a lecturer at Masaryk University in Brno and a member of CRoCS (Centre for Research on Cryptography and Security). His work focuses on practical cryptography, with an emphasis on uncovering weaknesses in real-world systems and improving their security.
He is known for contributions to randomness testing (including BoolTest and optimized implementations of NIST STS) and for co-authoring impactful cryptographic attacks such as ROCA and Minerva, which exposed vulnerabilities in widely deployed systems. His research bridges theory and practice, delivering results with direct security impact.
Jan Willemson obtained his PhD in computer science at Tartu University, Estonia, in 2002. He has worked on secure digital time-stamping, mobile robotics, multi-party computation and a number e-governance topics, in particular electronic voting. He has authored more than 80 academic papers in international journals and conferences.
Janno Siim is a researcher and lecturer in cryptography at the University of Tartu. He has worked on zero-knowledge proofs for over a decade and has a strong publication record in leading cryptography venues. His recent research focuses on strengthening the security of practical zero-knowledge systems under realistic assumptions. In recognition of his contributions, he received the Young IT Researcher Award from the President of Estonia last year.
Martin Suomalainen is a security engineer in Cybernetica focusing on post-quantum cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs. He is one of the co-authors of ZK-SecreC, a programming language which allows one to prove complex statements about private data. His talk will cover the challenges specific to the zero-knowledge setting, and the large-scale proofs they constructed using ZK-SecreC.
Søren Eller Thomsen holds a PhD in cryptography from Aarhus University, specializing in blockchain technology. Currently, he works as a senior cryptographic engineer at Partisia, a company dedicated to privacy-preserving technologies rooted in cryptography. Søren is also a co-editor of several specifications for the new EU Digital Identity Wallets, including TS14, which focuses on Zero Knowledge Proofs based on Multi-Message Signatures.
The conference is supported by the Cyber-security Excellence Hub in Estonia and South Moravia (CHESS) and funded by the European Union under Grant Agreement No. 101087529.