Flexible Distributed zk-SNARKs: A Framework for Scalable and Efficient Proof Generation
Shuangjie Bai, Jinwei Zhu, Xiaoming Hu · IEEE Internet of Things Journal · 2025
Succinct non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs) are a powerful cryptographic primitive that allow a prover to convince a verifier of the truth of a statement without revealing any additional information. Due to the high computational cost associated with proof generation in existing zk-SNARKs, distributed zero-knowledge proving has emerged as a promising outsourcing approach, where the prover delegates heavy computation to multiple servers across different locations, as seen in systems like Siniel and zkSaaS. However, existing distributed zkSNARKs still rely on large prime fields, which increase computational overhead, and they often suffer from unavoidable network bandwidth bottlenecks. In this paper, we propose FDzkS, a flexible and efficient collaborative proving distributed protocol constructed using group signatures and binary fields. Our protocol allows the prover to delegate computation to multiple workers without revealing any part of the witness. Most importantly, compared with existing distributed zkSNARK schemes, FDzkS enables both the prover and the workers to perform their tasks almost entirely offline, and it avoids complex interactions among the workers. We benchmark FDzkS against the most advanced protocols such as Siniel, Eos, zkSaaS, and Pianist, covering both semi-honest and malicious worker settings. Experimental results show that under low bandwidth conditions (64 Mbps), FDzkS reduces total proving time by up to 300 under high bandwidth conditions (4 Gbps), it still achieves up to 200% improvement in efficiency.