With 2024 well on its way and exciting projects picking up at RISC Zero, we’re excited to share a handful of performance optimizations planned for Q1 and Q2 of 2024 with our developer community. The upgrades described here are separated into two general categories:
TLDR: Look out for 7-10x+ performance improvements in the coming months.
Accelerator circuits can yield 600% or more improvements for specific algorithms and cryptographic operations. To enable custom accelerators, we’re working on a feature we call Circuit Composition, which will enable circuits to be composed with zkVM proofs, offering similar benefits to proof composition, but with alternative circuits rather than alternative zkVM proofs. The overall impact of a given accelerator depends on the cost of that given operation in a guest program. Overall, we’ve seen performance for common crypto crates improve 3x or more with preliminary acceleration. Check out our Guest Profiling Guide to learn more about our unique performance profiling tooling. Upcoming accelerator circuits include:
Our zkVM and proof systems have inspired a plethora of ZK research and derivative works, and RISC Zero’s technology is continuing to lead. On our current trajectory, we see a feasible path to 20x or more cost improvements by the end of 2024, enabling economically efficient ZK proving for all, improving the security of blockchain protocols and protecting user funds in the process. We are also working to establish shared zkVM performance benchmarks, making it easier and more transparent for developers to evaluate performance.
