How To Verify The KZG Ceremony & Claim Your POAP

Last year I wrote about Ethereum’s KZG Summoning Ceremony and showed you how you could take part.

Now, Proto-Danksharding — the update that necessitated the Ceremony — is nearly here. It will go live on March 13th as part of a package of updates known as Dencun. And that makes it a good time to follow up on the previous video and show you how you can verify your contribution and claim POAP to record your participation in the Ceremony.

Wait, What’s the KZG Summoning Ceremony?

If you don’t know — or can’t remember — what the KZG Summoning Ceremony was, then here’s a quick summary. Feel free to skip ahead if you’re already familiar.

The Ceremony was a process for generating a secret random number that Ethereum will use in its next major update, EIP-4844 (better known as Proto-Danksharding).

Proto-Danksharding requires a new cryptographic scheme called KZG Commitments, which are built around this secret random number. It’s absolutely imperative that no one ever knows what this number is. If anyone was to know it, they could craft false Commitments and ultimately cause all sorts of chaos.

Ethereum wanted to generate this number in the most reassuring way possible. It wanted everyone to have extremely high confidence in the secrecy of the number and the integrity of the KZG Commitments it would produce. And so it created the Summoning Ceremony.

In the Ceremony, anyone was free to make a small contribution towards the secret number. All of those small contributions were combined to create a single, shared secret at the end of the process. Crucially, the only way to know that final secret would be to know every contribution that went into creating it. If a single input was unknown, then the final secret would also be unknown. In other words, the Ceremony required only a single honest participant to guarantee the secret and therefore the integrity of the Commitment scheme.

More than 140, 000 contributions were made throughout the Ceremony, so it’s pretty safe to assume that at least one of those was honest. If you took part yourself, then you can be even more certain of this. Or, at least, you can be certain of it once you verify that your contribution was included. So, let’s see how to do that.

How To Verify The KZG Summoning Ceremony

Just like the Ceremony itself, the verification of the Ceremony Transcript is open to everyone. So, even if you didn’t participate in the event, you can reassure yourself that everything looks good by going through the validation process.

Those who did take part in the Ceremony can do two extra things. First, they can check that their submission was included in the final result. Second, if they used Sign In With Ethereum when contributing, they can claim a POAP to commemorate the event.

I’ll show you how to do all of these things now. And, as with the Ceremony itself, you don’t need to worry about anything difficult or dangerous here. The validation process is incredibly easy and risk-free.

Step 1: Go To The Ceremony Site

Go to Ceremony.Ethereum.Org

Go to ceremony.ethereum.org — the same site that was used for the ceremony itself. Click on Verify Transcript.

Step 2: Verify The Transcript

Click On Verify

You’ll be taken to a new screen where you will be able to verify the results of the KZG Ceremony.

Initially, the Verify button will be greyed out and un-clickable. That’s because the verification will happen on your device, and the Transcript needs to download for that to happen. After a short wait, the button will change colour. Once this has happened, click Verify.

The verification will now take place.

Wait For Each Verification Step To Complete

As you can see, the verification includes five separate steps. Each step involves a different set of tests and validations. Some are relatively simple. The Sanity Check, for example, just ensures the Transcript looks correct at a high level. Meanwhile, other steps are more complicated, involving some clever maths and cryptography to verify the finer details.

In all cases, you should see the status change to passed as the steps are completed.

Step 3: Check For Your Contribution

Search For The ENS Name, ETH Address, Or Github Handle That You Contributed With

If you participated in the Ceremony, you can now confirm that your contribution was included.

Use the textbox to search for the account you contributed with. If you logged in with Github, you will need to enter your Github handle. If you used Sign In With Ethereum, you can search for your ETH address or ENS name.

If your contribution was valid, it should appear in the list. You can click on the entry to look at the details, but frankly they won’t mean anything to most people.

Step 4: Claim Your POAP

If you’re not familiar with POAP, it stands for ‘Proof of Attendance Protocol’. They’re basically digital collectables that Ethereans like to use to record attendance or participation in certain events. They generally have very little value, so I wouldn’t claim one expecting to sell it for a fortune one day. No, it’s really just a bit of fun and something you can hold onto as a memento.

If you want to claim it, click on Claim POAP button. (If it’s still greyed out and you’ve searched using your ENS Name, try searching again with the full ETH Address instead).

Click Claim POAP

A POAP Checkout screen will open.

Click on the I Want This POAP button.

Click I Want This POAP

Connect your wallet to the site and select which network you want to claim the POAP on — either Ethereum or Arbitrum. Personally, I’d opt for Arbitrum as it should be much cheaper.

Connect Your Wallet And Select Which Network To Claim The POAP On

Click on the To Checkout button and then the Buy Now button.

Finally, sign the transaction with your wallet.

Click Buy Now Then Sign The Transaction With Your Wallet

Congratulations, you are now the proud owner of the KZG Ceremony Contributor POAP!

Wrapping Up

That’s really all there is to this. It’s all very simple and takes very little time and effort, so it’s worth checking out if you’re at all interested. And, if you’re not, you won’t really miss out on much.

If you want to learn more about the KZG Ceremony or Proto-Danksharding, make sure you check out my previous post. To see reflections and statistics about the Ceremony, take a look at the Ethereum Foundation’s Wrapping up the KZG Ceremony. And, for more details on what checks are involved in the Transcript verification, you can take a look at the official guidance.

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