# A Review of zk-SNARKs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.06877 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06877/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 14 Feb 2022.

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Autonomous Agents on Blockchains: Standards, Execution Models, and Trust Boundaries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.04583/) (2026)
- [Towards Secure and Private AI: A Framework for Decentralized Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.19401/) (2024)
- [Hashmarks: Privacy-Preserving Benchmarks for High-Stakes AI Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00645/) (2023)
- [Privacy-Preserving UCB Decision Process Verification via zk-SNARKs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12186/) (2024)
- [Fractal Signatures: Securing AI-Generated Pollock-Style Art via Intrinsic Watermarking and Blockchain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20519/) (2024)
- [Verifiable Split Learning via zk-SNARKs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.01356/) (2025)
- [Knowledge is Overrated: A zero-knowledge machine learning and cryptographic hashing-based framework for verifiable, low latency inference at the LHC](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.12592/) (2025)
- [Trustless Federated Learning at Edge-Scale: A Compositional Architecture for Decentralized, Verifiable, and Incentive-Aligned Coordination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.21118/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

A zk-SNARK is a protocol that lets one party, the prover, prove to another party, the verifier, that a statement about some privately-held information is true without revealing the information itself. This paper describes technical foundations, current applications, and some novel applications of zk-SNARKs. Regarding technical foundations, we go over the Quadratic Arithmetic Program reduction and the Pinocchio protocol. We then go over financial security applications like Zcash and Tornado Cash, and zk-Rollup applications like zkEVM and Darkforest. We propose novel zk-SNARK protocols for private auctions and decentralized card games on the blockchain, providing code for the proposed applications. We conclude by touching on promising zk-SNARK innovations, such as zk-STARKs.