ZPrize
Setting the pace in ZK acceleration
ZPrize is the most respected competition focused on advancing zero-knowledge proof performance across hardware platforms. It brings together contributors from industry, academia, and open-source communities to push the limits of what’s possible in provable computation.
Snarkify is the only team in the industry to achieve six ZPrize wins in different categories, consistently delivering top performance across GPU, FPGA, and browser-based proving. Our co-founder, Niall Emmart, played a key role in shaping ZPrize outcomes — open-source breakthrough approaches that have since been adopted and extended by many leading ZK teams.
We’re proud to be part of the ZPrize initiative and to continue raising the performance baseline for the entire zero-knowledge community.
Performance Highlights
ZPrize 2022
1st place GPU MSM Acceleration: 2.33× speedup over baseline
1st place WASM MSM Acceleration: 5.4× improvement in browser-based finite-field and elliptic curve operations
ZPrize 2023
1st place WASM MSM Acceleration (BLS 12-377): Up to 150× faster than baseline
1st place WASM MSM Acceleration (Twisted Edwards): ~136× faster than baseline
1st place FPGA MSM Acceleration: >99% pipeline efficiency with a batched affine pipeline design
1st place End-to-End zkSNARK GPU Proving: 0.54 seconds per proof, ~900× speedup over CPU baseline
All of our work was open-sourced, reproducible, and focused on real-world relevance for zero-knowledge systems.
Our take on achieving real-time proving
Snarkify’s recent ZPrize results in end-to-end proving show that real-time zkSNARK generation is no longer theoretical — it’s an achievable milestone, made possible through thoughtful system design and engineering. This progress opens the door to new possibilities in on-chain validity proofs, blockchains’ interoperability, and broader zero-knowledge innovation.
Through extensive work across hardware environments, we’ve come to a clear conclusion: GPUs offer the most practical and scalable path to real-time proving today. Their combination of performance, programmability, cost-efficiency, and continuous advancements makes GPUs well-suited for the evolving demands of zero-knowledge infrastructure.
For more on our perspective and why we’re betting on GPUs to power the future of ZK proving, read our full thread.
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