SP1¶

Description¶

A zkVM by Succinct Labs. Write standard Rust and prove execution. Uses a STARK + SNARK (Groth16 on BN254) hybrid for compact final proofs. Outperforms RISC Zero on heavy cryptography (5–10× cycle reduction via precompiles for ECDSA and hashing). Proof sizes are large (~9 MB for ECDSA per benchmark).

Evaluation¶

Criterion	Value
Based on	STARK + SNARK (Groth16 on BN254)
Easiness	very easy — similar to Noir, write standard Rust
Fast and short (<1s, <1MB)	no — proof generation 11s, proof size ~9 MB for ECDSA
Post-quantum	no (Groth16 wrapper)
Mobile and web	probably — not confirmed
Maintained	yes — active issues and PRs
Open source	yes — Apache-2.0 / MIT
Security review	unknown
secp256k1 signature + sha256	yes — https://github.com/sp1-patches/elliptic-curves

Notes¶

zkVM benchmark comparison for ECDSA signature verification:

zkVM	Proof Gen (s)	Verify (ms)	Proof Size (bytes)	Exec (ms)
SP1	11.14	763	9,277,678	55
OpenVM	2.52	885	4,173,289	166
Pico	141.17	1,081	16,436,918	615
Valida	184	1,344	5,973,657	589
Powdr	116.31	N/A	11,477,033	740

Source: https://github.com/8ulce28/zkVM-ecdsa-benchmark

Based on¶

zk-STARKs, Groth16, Plonky3

Resources¶

Docs: SP1-Docs
Blog: comparative-analysis-of-sp1-and-risc-zero-zero-knowledge