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Circle STARK

Overview

Circle STARK is a protocol jointly developed by the StarkWare and Polygon Labs teams, using the Mersenne prime field M31. According to the whitepaper published by Polygon Labs and StarkWare, Circle STARK is expected to accelerate the proving process for zero-knowledge Rollups.

Circle STARK combined with the M31 prime field significantly improves STARK proof efficiency. The new Circle STARK proofs should be completed faster than current STARK proofs. While the mathematical principles behind this research are complex, the use of the classic circle improves STARK's proving capability by 100x.

Technical Innovation

Mersenne Prime Field (M31): Circle STARK uses the special Mersenne prime M31 = 2^31 - 1 as its finite field, which makes arithmetic operations more efficient.

Circle Curve Geometry: Leverages the mathematical properties of circle curves to optimize the proof generation process, achieving significant performance improvements over traditional methods.

Stwo Proof System

Based on the Circle STARK protocol, StarkWare developed the ultra-fast proof system Stwo, significantly improving upon the existing Stone prover. Polygon expects this technology to bring a 7 to 10x performance improvement.

Industry Impact

The collaboration between StarkWare and Polygon Labs may be surprising, as the two teams often compete in the broader Ethereum scaling space. The whitepaper was published on Wednesday, co-authored by Ulrich Haboeck of Polygon Labs and David Levit and Shahar Papini of StarkWare, and is currently available online.

This development represents a significant advancement in zero-knowledge proof technology for blockchain scalability.

  • zkSTARK
  • StarkWare
  • Polygon
  • Mersenne Primes
  • Stwo Proof System