SNARK (Succinct Non-interactive Argument of Knowledge)

A SNARK is a class of zero-knowledge proof system characterized by succinctness (proofs are short — typically hundreds of bytes — regardless of the computation's complexity), non-interactivity (the prover sends a single message without back-and-forth with the verifier), and the argument-of-knowledge property (a prover who produces a valid proof must know the witness, i.e., the secret inputs to the computation). zk-SNARKs such as Groth16 and PLONK are the cryptographic core of ZK Compression on Solana, enabling off-chain provers to compress complex state transition validity into a proof that a Solana validator can verify on-chain cheaply using the alt_bn128 syscall over the BN254 elliptic curve. Most current Solana zk-SNARK deployments rely on trusted setups, though newer transparent variants like STARKs eliminate this requirement at the cost of larger proof sizes.