PLONK
A zero-knowledge proving system that uses a single, reusable 'universal' trusted setup supporting many different circuits, rather than requiring a new setup for each one.
PLONK is a zero-knowledge proving system designed around a universal trusted setup (see Kaavon's "Trusted Setup" glossary definition) — a single setup ceremony whose output can be reused across many different computation circuits, rather than requiring an entirely new ceremony each time a circuit changes, which is the key limitation of earlier systems like Groth16 (see Kaavon's "Groth16" glossary definition). This makes PLONK considerably more practical for applications that expect to update or iterate on their underlying circuit logic over time.
PLONK's proofs and verification costs are generally somewhat larger than Groth16's highly optimized, circuit-specific proofs, reflecting a tradeoff between Groth16's narrower but more efficient specialization and PLONK's broader flexibility. PLONK and its various derivative variants have become widely used across zkEVM (see Kaavon's "zkEVM" glossary definition) implementations and other zero-knowledge rollup designs specifically because of this flexibility to evolve a circuit without repeating a full trusted setup ceremony.
Examples
- A zkEVM project can update its underlying proving circuit as it develops without needing an entirely new trusted setup ceremony, since PLONK's universal setup supports that flexibility.
- PLONK trades some of Groth16's proof-size and verification-speed efficiency for the significant practical benefit of a reusable, circuit-agnostic trusted setup.