Vitalik publishes article: GKR protocol improves zero-knowledge proof computation efficiency

ChainCatcher News, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin published an article this morning introducing the GKR protocol. The GKR (Goldwasser-Kalai-Rothblum) protocol is becoming a core technology for high-performance zero-knowledge proof systems.

Recent research shows that GKR, by avoiding commitment operations at intermediate layers and only committing to inputs and outputs, can reduce the theoretical overhead of traditional STARK methods from 100 times to about 15 times, and in practical implementations even below 10 times. This protocol is particularly suitable for multi-layer computational models such as the Poseidon hash function and neural networks. Its core "sumcheck" technology recursively simplifies multidimensional problems through random linear combinations. Although GKR itself does not provide zero-knowledge properties, it can be combined with ZK-SNARK or ZK-STARK, and has become a key technical support for real-time ZK-EVM proofs and large-scale machine learning model verification.