September 23, 2022

ZK White Paper: Efficient ZK Proofs for Keccak

As part of our ongoing efforts to inform the Ethereum community about the efforts of Polygon’s zero-knowledge (ZK) teams, we will be posting a series of technical papers by our engineers and researchers. We hope that everyone who’s interested in the inner workings of Polygon’s ZK projects, Ethereum itself, and cryptographic engineering in general will be able to learn something from them. Today’s author is Polygon Zero intern Angus Gruen.

This is an introduction to my work on efficiently proving the output of Keccak, one of the core cryptographic functions at the heart of Ethereum. The white paper below demonstrates how we can use a process called arithmetization to construct an efficient ZK proof for Keccak. It introduces some novel concepts called computation and verification polynomials which help accomplish this task.

Read on to learn exactly how this bit of ZK magic works:

Arithmetizing Keccak for Efficient ZK Proofs Download ZK Whitepaper

Polygon is so bullish on the future of ZK, the core development team made it a centerpiece of its strategic vision in the Zero Knowledge Thesis published in August 2021. As part of that mission, the team has committed $1 billion, a significant portion of the treasury, to ZK-related efforts.

Polygon is always on the lookout for new ZK talent. You can browse all the open vacancies here, and also follow our LinkedIn page. Tune in to the Polygon Blog for more in this series and to get the latest on zero-knowledge proofs and let's bring the world to Ethereum!