Jolt, a state-of-the-art zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM) developed by a16z crypto, has seen significant improvements in performance and usability since its release in April. Key improvements include a reduction in verifier costs and new integrations with Rust and RISC-V. – Proof sizes have been reduced from megabytes to approximately 200 kilobytes, with potential future reductions to 25 kilobytes.
– The Jolt prover is expected to speed up threefold due to recent optimizations in the sum-check protocol and better utilization of the constraint system’s uniform nature. – A16z crypto has expanded Jolt’s capabilities by integrating it with the Rust standard library, enabling the use of more existing Rust crates.
– Support for the RISC-V “M” extension has been added, which enhances performance for programs with intensive multiplication or division operations. – Jolt has integrated new commitment schemes, Zeromorph and HyperKZG, which reduce proof sizes while maintaining performance. – A sum-check-based protocol has been implemented, further reducing multiple opening proofs to a single one, optimizing both proof size and prover time.
– A Solidity implementation of the Jolt verifier is in progress, enabling on-chain verification of Jolt proofs on any EVM blockchain. – An AVX-512 library for 256-bit Montgomery arithmetic promises to accelerate field arithmetic in Jolt and other elliptic curve-based SNARKs on compatible hardware. – Formal verification efforts have identified minor bugs and optimizations, contributing to the reliability of Jolt’s implementation.
– Future improvements include sum-check prover optimizations, further reductions in proof size and verifier costs, GPU integration, and the integration of Jolt with Nova for continuations via folding.
