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SEC-03

Zero-Knowledge Proofs

Proving systems, privacy design and the economics of verification.

Research noteZK-2026-0211

The first folding round costs the most

ReedWeave starts with an m-ary fold rather than a binary one, cutting prover work from d log d to d log(d/m) at constant rate.

3 minSource: IACR ePrint

Recent

  1. Research noteZK-2026-0210

    Moving prover cost off the large polynomial

    LiftWHIR splits an evaluation proof into a proximity test on a shorter codeword and a smaller evaluation, trading proof size for prover time.

    3 minSource: IACR ePrint

  2. News briefZK-2026-0209

    A benchmark you cannot argue with

    The Ethereum Foundation has opened better.codes: push a machine-checked soundness bound for a Reed–Solomon proximity problem to 128 bits, with Lean deciding who is right.

    3 minSource: Ethereum Foundation

  3. Research noteZK-2026-0208

    Keeping the hash function out of the circuit

    Symphony folds many statements into one without embedding a hash in the verified circuit, and reads its input in O(log log n) passes.

    2 minSource: IACR ePrint

  4. Research noteZK-2026-0207

    A 49-bit prime chosen to fit the instruction

    MamaBearZKP picks its field to match AVX-512IFMA and reports up to 18× over Plonky3 on a single thread.

    2 minSource: IACR ePrint

  5. Research noteZK-2026-0206

    A SHA-256 circuit folded in 91 milliseconds

    NeutronNova reports roughly ten times Nova's speed on a million-constraint circuit, with a recursive verifier down to three scalar multiplications.

    2 minSource: IACR ePrint

  6. Research noteZK-2026-0205

    Someone reproduced the numbers before agreeing

    A post-quantum proof-native chain posts benchmarks, and the most interesting part of the thread is what the second reader did with them.

    3 minSource: Ethereum Research

  7. Research noteZK-2026-0204

    A folding scheme that drops the SIMD requirement

    Microsoft Research revises Neo and SuperNeo, lattice-based folding aimed at post-quantum security without giving up small fields.

    2 minSource: IACR ePrint

  8. AnalysisZK-2026-0203

    Proving costs fell 40%, and the shortlist changed

    Cheaper proofs do not make new things possible so much as make old things affordable. Those are different lists.

    SeverityLow

    11 min

  9. Research noteZK-2026-0197

    Circuit bugs are the new contract bugs

    An under-constrained circuit proves statements that are not true, and nothing about it looks wrong.

    SeverityHigh

    7 min

  10. AnalysisZK-2026-0190

    Privacy pools and the compliance question

    Proving where funds did not come from turns out to be more tractable than proving where they did.

    SeverityModerate

    8 min

  11. Market briefZK-2026-0184

    Hardware proving consolidates around two designs

    The field narrowed faster than expected, which is good for cost and bad for diversity.

    SeverityLow

    5 min