Servicifying zk-SNARKs Execution for Verifiable Off-chain Computations

TL;DR

This paper proposes a Proving Service to operationalize zk-SNARKs within Verifiable Off-chain Computation by situating the prover off-chain in cloud environments and exposing a service-oriented API around the ZoKrates workflow. By wrapping the ZoKrates interpreter as ZoKrates-API and containerizing it for Kubernetes deployment, the approach enables scalable, interoperable, and manageable proof generation with an off-chain proof registry to reuse circuit keys. The evaluation demonstrates substantial gains from vertical and horizontal scaling, highlighting the practicality of cloud-native deployments for VOC workloads such as rollups. The work bridges cryptographic proof systems with modern systems engineering, offering a blueprint and open-source tooling for production-ready zk-SNARK proof generation in cloud ecosystems.

Abstract

Zk-SNARKs help scale blockchains with Verifiable Off-chain Computations (VOC). zk-SNARK DSL toolkits are key when designing arithmetic circuits but fall short of automating the subsequent proof-generation step in an automated manner. We emphasize the need for portability, interoperability, and manageability in VOC-based solutions and introduce a Proving Service that is designed to provide a scalable and reusable solution for generating zk-SNARK proofs leveraging clouds.

Figures (3)

• Figure 1: Proving Service Model
• Figure 2: Proving Service Architecture
• Figure 3: Proving Time and Memory Consumption