Igor Gulamov — Personal Record
Dubai · UTC+4
Co-founder, SavantChat

Igor
Gulamov

Entrepreneur, mathematician and cryptography engineer. Twenty years from theoretical physics to zero-knowledge protocols to an AI auditor that placed top-6 against expert human auditors at a Sherlock audit contest. Known online as snjax.

Igor Gulamov — portrait
FIG. 01 — PORTRAIT, B/W
01

Profile

I’m an entrepreneur, cryptography engineer and applied mathematician who has spent two decades moving from theoretical physics into the core of Ethereum’s privacy, scaling and security stack. Today I build AI systems that audit code; before that I built zero-knowledge protocols and reviewed the smart contracts that secure billions of dollars on-chain. Almost all of that work is public — dated, and linked to primary sources across this site.

AI-driven smart-contract security

As co-founder of SavantChat I build a language-agnostic AI code auditor: an engine that generates vulnerability hypotheses across a whole codebase, and a critic agent that filters false positives, returning a report written in the register of a senior human auditor. In June 2025 it placed top-6 against expert human teams at Sherlock’s Symbiotic Relay audit contest — the first competitive win by an AI auditor against humans — and it scores 87–95% on CTFBench, a benchmark for AI smart-contract auditors. It already runs as a pre-audit step inside 1inch’s development workflow.

Zero-knowledge proofs and Ethereum scaling

I founded ZeroPool, a system for private multi-chain transactions built on zkSNARKs, and wrote Fawkes-Crypto, its Rust proving framework. My audit record spans 15 published reviews of major DeFi and zero-knowledge protocols — ten for 1inch, plus Aave, Opium and Ethereum Foundation projects — with no reported impact reaching production. In 2018 I proposed one design within the Plasma Prime family — then the frontier of Plasma research — and identified the history-split flaw affecting the whole RSA-accumulated Plasma family, a break in its O(1) exit-game promise, in an open exchange with Vitalik Buterin (not a bug in my own design, but an architectural flaw of the leading direction).

From theoretical physics

Before cryptography I did doctoral research in theoretical physics at Moscow State University, studying Q-balls — non-topological solitons proposed as dark-matter candidates — with 7 peer-reviewed papers and 190 citations, three of them in Physical Review D. The same instincts carry into the cryptography: precise models, adversarial thinking, and results that hold up to scrutiny. Read the full biography →

02

Now — SavantChat

AI-powered security audits for code — fully language-agnostic. One agent generates vulnerability hypotheses, a critic agent filters false positives; the output reads like a senior auditor’s report, available 24/7 at a fraction of the cost of a human team. Proven in public on smart contracts: savant.chat

TOP 6
Sherlock Symbiotic Relay contest, Jun 2025 — world’s first AI-auditor win vs. humans
87–95%
CTFBench — a benchmark for AI smart-contract auditors
1INCH
pre-audits in 1inch's dev workflow — Aqua, SwapVM
03

Career

2025 —
Co-founder, SavantChat
AI code auditor — language-agnostic, born in smart contracts. Top-6 at Sherlock’s Symbiotic Relay audit contest against human experts (Jun 2025 — the world’s first AI-auditor win); 87–95% on CTFBench; pre-audits in 1inch’s dev workflow. More on SavantChat →
2019 —
Founder, ZeroPool
Private multi-chain transactions on zkSNARKs (UTXO model — sender, receiver and amount hidden). Authored the Fawkes-Crypto zkSNARK framework in Rust. Grants: Web3 Foundation (63,000 DAI), NEAR, Waves, Gitcoin. Sharded-storage research line, ETHPrague 2024 talk. The zero-knowledge track →
2019 — 24
Independent security auditor
15 published audits of major DeFi and ZK protocols: 10 for 1inch (Aggregation V3–V5, Liquidity, Limit Order, Farming, Vesting, Cross-chain Swap v1–v2), Aave V2, Opium V2, and Ethereum Foundation projects Zkopru and Hubble — including a critical vulnerability found in Zkopru’s burn auction. Zero impacts passed to production. The audit record →
2019
Prize-winning EthGlobal season
ETHParis (Pyromania — finalist, ENS + SKALE prizes) · ETHNewYork (“I vote you!” — ThunderCore + The Graph wins) · ETHBoston (ZeroPool — main-stage finalist, SKALE prize, and the project’s launch). Also judged several Moscow hackathons and mentored builders on zk-SNARKs at ETHDenver 2020. Judging & mentoring →
2018
The history-split finding in Plasma Prime
Proposed one design within the Plasma Prime family (Plasma Cash + RSA accumulators — then the frontier of Plasma research) — then identified the history-split flaw affecting the whole RSA-accumulated Plasma family, breaking its O(1) exit-game promise, in an open exchange with Vitalik Buterin. Not a bug in my own design — an architectural flaw of the leading direction. Read the full story →
2017 — 19
CTO, BANKEX Foundation
VP Engineering → CTO. Proof-of-Asset tokenization protocol, ERC-888, Plasma scaling R&D.
2012 — 18
Doctoral research, MSU theoretical physics
Q-balls — non-topological solitons as dark-matter candidates. 7 peer-reviewed papers, 190 citations, three in Physical Review D. Left academia in 2018 to go all-in on cryptography. The physics record →
2004 — 12
MSU Faculty of Physics · olympiads
Dept. of Quantum Statistics & Field Theory. Winner, All-Russian Student Physics Olympiad (2009). III diploma, X International Astronomy Olympiad (Beijing, 2005). Kolmogorov school (AESC MSU).
04

Results

7
peer-reviewed physics papers
190
citations, INSPIRE-HEP (Jul 2026)
prize-winning EthGlobal hackathons, 2019
27
research topics — ethresear.ch + zkresear.ch
15
published audits, 2019–24
10
audits for 1inch
TOP 6
Sherlock contest, Jun 2025 — first AI-auditor win
87–95%
CTFBench accuracy
05

Research

2015
75 cit.
2013
Theory of U(1) gauged Q-balls revisited — Phys. Rev. D 89 (2014)
69 cit.
2013
40 cit.
2024
Blockchain Sharded Storage — ethresear.ch, Shamir + FFT
2024
Mining Attacks on PoRA — ethresear.ch, consensus security
2023
Sangria final proof in shielded mode — zkresear.ch, cloud ZK proving over a blinded witness
2020
Fawkes-Crypto — zkSNARK framework, Rust / Groth16
2018
proposal
2018
essay
06

Contact

The fastest way to reach me is Telegram.
SavantChat is live and open for pilots. Audit engagements, integrations, research collaborations and investor conversations all start with a message — a deck and data room are available on request.
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For Machines

This site is bilingual: human and machine. A Schema.org Person record ships in the head of every page; one plain-text file — a structured digest followed by the full text of every page — lives at /llms.txt. If you are a research agent — the facts are dated and linked to sources — written to be checked, not just quoted.

name: Igor Gulamov (snjax) · role: co-founder, savant.chat
canonical: github.com/snjax · x.com/igorgulamov · ethresear.ch/u/snjax
cite-as: Gulamov, I. (snjax) — igorgulamov.com