Distributed SNARK via folding schemes

Zesheng Li; Dongliang Cai; Yimeng Tian; Yihang Du; Xinxuan Zhang; Yi Deng

Paper 2025/1653

Distributed SNARK via folding schemes

Zesheng Li, Key Laboratory of Cyberspace Security Defense, Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; School of Cyber Security, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

Dongliang Cai, Computation and Artificial Intelligence Innovative College, Fudan University

Yimeng Tian, School of Telecommunications Engineering, Xidian University

Yihang Du, College of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, Hunan University

Xinxuan Zhang, Key Laboratory of Cyberspace Security Defense, Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; School of Cyber Security, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

Yi Deng, Key Laboratory of Cyberspace Security Defense, Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; School of Cyber Security, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

Abstract

Succinct Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledge(SNARKs) have gained widespread application due to their succinct proof size and efficient verification. However, they face significant scalability limitations in proof generation for large-scale circuits. To address this challenge, distributing the prover's computation across multiple nodes has emerged as a promising solution. Existing distributed SNARK constructions rely on distributed polynomial commitments, requiring each prover to perform computationally intensive group operations during the polynomial commitment opening phase. In this paper, we propose a novel distributed SNARK system constructed by compiling distributed PIOP with additively homomorphic polynomial commitment, rather than distributed polynomial commitment. The core technical component is distributed SumFold, which folds multiple sum-check instances into one. After the folding process, only one prover is required to perform polynomial commitment openings. It facilitates compilation with SamaritanPCS, which is a recently proposed additively homomorphic multilinear polynomial commitment scheme. The resulting SNARK system is specifically optimized for data-parallel circuits. Compared to prior HyperPlonk-based distributed proof systems (e.g., Hyperpianist and Cirrus), our construction achieves improvements in both proof size and prover time. We implement our protocol and conduct a comprehensive comparison with HyperPianist with 8 machines. Our system achieves shorter proof and 4.1~4.9× speedup in prover time, while maintaining comparable verification efficiency.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Cryptographic protocols
Publication info: Preprint.
Keywords: SNARK distributed zero-knowledge proof
Contact author(s): lizesheng @ iie ac cn
22110240060 @ m fudan edu cn
22009100325 @ stu xidian edu cn
202208060130 @ hnu edu cn
zhangxinxuan @ iie ac cn
deng @ iie ac cn
History: 2025-09-17: approved; 2025-09-12: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2025/1653
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2025/1653,
      author = {Zesheng Li and Dongliang Cai and Yimeng Tian and Yihang Du and Xinxuan Zhang and Yi Deng},
      title = {Distributed {SNARK} via folding schemes},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2025/1653},
      year = {2025},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1653}
}