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Systematic review: Comparing zk-SNARK, zk-STARK, and bulletproof protocols for privacy-preserving authentication (Oude Roelink, El-Hajj, Sarmah 2024)

Last modified: 2026-10-27

DOI: 10.1002/spy2.401 · URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/spy2.401

Summary

Systematic literature review (Security and Privacy, 2024) of works using zk-SNARKs, zk-STARKs and Bulletproofs for privacy-preserving authentication across financial, medical and other domains. Finds performance figures varying by orders of magnitude across implementations and inconsistent security-analysis methodologies, making comparisons difficult. Useful as an entry point when choosing a proof system for e-ID predicate proofs.

Related resources

• Bulletproofs: Short Proofs for Confidential Transactions and More (Bünz et al. 2018) (paper, 2017)
• Fast Reed-Solomon Interactive Oracle Proofs of Proximity (FRI) (paper, 2018)
• On the Size of Pairing-Based Non-interactive Arguments (Groth16) (paper, 2016)