Fu Yong Quah

I recently ported the Hardcaml_step_testbench library, one of the libraries that we use at Jane Street for Hardcaml simulations, from using monads to using algebraic effects, a new OCaml 5 feature. This blog post walks through what algebraic effects are, why you should consider using them in lieu of monads, and how to actually work with them using the Handled_effect library.

In 2022 a consortium of companies ran an international competition, called the ZPrize, to advance the state of the art in “zero-knowledge” cryptography. We decided to have a go in our free time at submitting solutions to both the Multi-Scalar Multiplication (MSM) and Number Theoretic Transform (NTT) tracks, using the same open source Hardcaml libraries that Jane Street uses for our own FPGA development.