Polaris: Transparent Succinct Zero-Knowledge Arguments for R1CS with Efficient Verifier
Shihui Fu, Guang Gong · Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies · 2021
Abstract We present a new zero-knowledge succinct argument of knowledge (zkSNARK) scheme for Rank-1 Constraint Satisfaction (RICS), a widely deployed NP-complete language that generalizes arithmetic circuit satisfiability. By instantiating with different commitment schemes, we obtain several zkSNARKs where the verifier’s costs and the proof size range fromO(log2N) to O(N) O\left( {\sqrt N } \right) depending on the underlying polynomial commitment schemes when applied to anN-gate arithmetic circuit. All these schemes do not require a trusted setup. It is plausibly post-quantum secure when instantiated with a secure collision-resistant hash function. We report on experiments for evaluating the performance of our proposed system. For instance, for verifying a SHA-256 preimage (less than 23k AND gates) in zero-knowledge with 128 bits security, the proof size is less than 150kB and the verification time is less than 11ms, both competitive to existing systems.