{"ID":2830864,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.10020","arxiv_id":"2512.10020","title":"A Comparative Analysis of zk-SNARKs and zk-STARKs: Theory and Practice","abstract":"Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) are central to secure and privacy-preserving computation, with zk-SNARKs and zk-STARKs emerging as leading frameworks offering distinct trade-offs in efficiency, scalability, and trust assumptions. While their theoretical foundations are well studied, practical performance under real-world conditions remains less understood. In this work, we present a systematic, implementation-level comparison of zk-SNARKs (Groth16) and zk-STARKs using publicly available reference implementations on a consumer-grade ARM platform. Our empirical evaluation covers proof generation time, verification latency, proof size, and CPU profiling. Results show that zk-SNARKs generate proofs 68x faster with 123x smaller proof size, but verify slower and require trusted setup, whereas zk-STARKs, despite larger proofs and slower generation, verify faster and remain transparent and post-quantum secure. Profiling further identifies distinct computational bottlenecks across the two systems, underscoring how execution models and implementation details significantly affect real-world performance. These findings provide actionable insights for developers, protocol designers, and researchers in selecting and optimizing proof systems for applications such as privacy-preserving transactions, verifiable computation, and scalable rollups.","short_abstract":"Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) are central to secure and privacy-preserving computation, with zk-SNARKs and zk-STARKs emerging as leading frameworks offering distinct trade-offs in efficiency, scalability, and trust assumptions. While their theoretical foundations are well studied, practical performance under real-world...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.10020","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.10020v1","authors":"[\"Ayush Nainwal\",\"Atharva Kamble\",\"Nitin Awathare\"]","published":"2025-12-10T19:19:47Z","proceeding":"cs.CR","tasks":"[\"cs.CR\",\"cs.DC\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}