Home > Resources > papers > BCTV13-vonNeumann

Succinct Non-Interactive Zero Knowledge for a von Neumann Architecture (Ben-Sasson, Chiesa, Tromer, Virza 2013)

Last modified: 2026-10-27

URL: https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/879

Summary

Builds a zkSNARK for proving correct execution of programs on a simple von Neumann architecture (TinyRAM) using a universal circuit, so one preprocessing serves all programs up to a size bound (USENIX Security 2014). Introduces the efficient routing-network based universal circuit and the libsnark implementation. An early ancestor of today's zkVMs.

Related resources

• Pinocchio: Nearly Practical Verifiable Computation (Parno et al. 2013) (paper, 2013)
• Quadratic Span Programs and Succinct NIZKs without PCPs (GGPR 2013) (paper, 2012)
• SNARKs for C: Verifying Program Executions Succinctly and in Zero Knowledge (Ben-Sasson et al. 2013) (paper, 2013)