(2026-06) Flock; Fast Proving for Batch Boolean Computations
2026-06-28
For many applications of SNARKs, a key bottleneck is proving large batches of standard cryptographic hash evaluations, such as SHA-256, Keccak, or BLAKE3. We introduce Flock, a hash-based SNARK for extremely fast proving of such batched Boolean computations. Flock proves batches of the same R1CS circuit (plus input/output relations between them), can prove hash-chains and Merkle path openings, and in principle can be extended to full-fledged hash-based signature verification. At its core, Flock combines new optimizations for the lincheck and zerocheck protocols with an aggressively optimized proof-of-concept implementation co-designed by coding agents.
On a single core of an M4 Max processor, Flock proves 82k evaluations of the BLAKE3 compression function, 42k SHA-256 compressions, and 30k Keccak permutations per second — less than a overhead over native execution. On ten cores, throughput exceeds 660k BLAKE3 compressions per second; in proving SHA-256, Flock is more than faster than Binius64, the prior state of the art, and more than faster than the fastest elliptic curve-based SNARK we measured against.