INTRODUCING SNAIL: VERIFIABLE COMPUTATION NEAR-NATIVE SPEEDS

Summary from the TLDR Crypto newsletter

SNAIL introduces a new zero knowledge circuit that improves prover runtime to be within 30% of native execution. It is a new way to prove that complex computations (like executing a blockchain block) were done correctly without redoing the work. Instead of doing lots of cryptographic tricks, like FFT transforms and using big Merkle trees, SNAIL streams a program's data once and uses a novel “difference check” to compress everything into a single proof. Live, on-the-fly proofs are now practical, enabling Ethereum blocks to be proved in 30ms and verified on a smartphone in 1ms.