As Crosslink approaches the end of the prototype phase, Shielded Labs is beginning a structured hardening process to evaluate the protocol’s security and overall readiness for version 1.0. With the testnet prototype nearly complete, the focus is shifting toward detailed review, stress-testing assumptions, and addressing questions and concerns raised by the community. This stage involves uncovering potential security flaws, assessing acceptable tradeoffs, and reducing unknown unknowns before the design is finalized. The goal is to increase confidence that Crosslink has no fatal flaws and is prepared for deployment if it has the support of the community and coinholders.
To support this process, we are bringing on Nicolás “Nikete” Della Penna to conduct an independent review of Crosslink’s design. Nicolás is a mechanism designer and researcher whose work spans economics, machine learning, and decentralized systems. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Australian National University and has published research [1] on automated market makers, prediction markets, MEV, Sybil-resistance, and the dynamics of permissionless systems. His work has appeared in venues such as NIPS, CHI, and Science, and his recent contributions include MEV-minimizing AMM design, welfare analysis of CFMMs, and unified frameworks for Sybil-resistant mechanisms. Outside academia, he is the CEO of GroupLang and has consulted for both early-stage and publicly traded companies on mechanism design and collective-intelligence systems.
Nicolás’s review will focus on evaluating the incentive structure of Crosslink, including how miners, finalizers, stakers, and the broader community are expected to behave under the current design. The audit will identify likely equilibria, potential failure modes, and the Penalty for Failure to Defend across safety, liveness, and censorship resistance. It will also examine areas where the protocol relies on incentives versus social coordination and provide concrete recommendations for how to strengthen the design. The deliverables include a written audit report, an executive summary, a slide deck, and a draft public summary to support community understanding and discussion of the findings.
Finally, we have pre-registered the scope of this review, which means publishing the specific questions, assumptions, and areas of focus before the review begins to ensure transparency about what is being evaluated and how. Anyone can review the pre-registered scope here: Mechanism Design Audit of Crosslink Zebra - 2025-12-11 - The Zebra Crosslink Book.
We see this review process as something that should become a standard part of how proposed features for future network upgrades are evaluated.
[1] Selected publications related to crypto:
- Interpreting Prediction Markets: A Stochastic Approach (NIPS 2012) — Connecting market price dynamics to stochastic mirror descent
- An Experimental Study of Cryptocurrency Market Dynamics (CHI 2018) — Large-scale field experiment on peer influence in cryptocurrency markets
- Constant Function Market Making, Social Welfare and Maximal Extractable Value (2022) — Analysis of CFMM welfare properties and MEV bounds
- The Cost of Sybils, Credible Commitments, and False-Name Proof Mechanisms (2023) — Unifying framework for Sybil-resistance in mechanism design
- Towards Optimal Prior-Free Permissionless Rebate Mechanisms (2023) — Fair compensation mechanisms for MEV and orderflow auctions
- Natural Language Mechanisms via Self-Resolution with Foundation Models (2024) — Using LLMs for incentive-compatible information aggregation