IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (E
IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P) Year 2024 Peer-reviewed
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Blockchain Security · DeFi

zk-Bench: A Toolset for Comparative Evaluation and Performance Benchmarking of SNARKs

Jens Ernstberger Stefanos Chaliasos George Kadianakis Sebastian Steinhorst Philipp Jovanovic Arthur Gervais
2024
Publication year
EuroS&P
Venue
Peer-reviewed
Type
§ Abstract

Summary

Zero-knowledge proof systems are increasingly used in blockchain applications, but their performance characteristics vary widely across different implementations, making it difficult for developers to select the right system for their use case. We present zk-Bench, a comprehensive benchmarking toolset for evaluating and comparing the performance of different SNARK systems. Our toolset measures proof generation time, proof size, verification time, and memory consumption across a standardized suite of computational tasks. We benchmark seven major SNARK systems, including Groth16, PLONK, HyperPLONK, and variations thereof, providing the first systematic comparative evaluation. Our results reveal significant performance trade-offs between proof size, generation time, and universality, and suggest that no single SNARK system dominates across all metrics.

Cite this paper — BibTeX 
@InProceedings{zkbenchatoolsetfor,
  title = "{zk-Bench: A Toolset for Comparative Evaluation and Performance Benchmarking of SNARKs}",
  author = "Jens Ernstberger and Stefanos Chaliasos and George Kadianakis and Sebastian Steinhorst and Philipp Jovanovic and Arthur Gervais and Benjamin Livshits and Michele Orrù",
  year = "2024",
  month = jul,
  booktitle = "IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P)",
}
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