RELEASE OVERVIEW
The Decentralized Storage Alliance (DSA) recently released dramatic cryptographic processing improvements that stand to benefit zero-knowledge proof (zk proofs) processing within the Filecoin network as well as throughout the Web3 infrastructure stack. These advances optimized several key computational algorithms, as well as improved CPU and GPU processing flows to reduce cost and improve performance by up to 80%. The advances reduce what used to take many servers and combine it into a single server thereby gaining additional processing efficiencies. Filecoin development teams have integrated select improvements directly into Filecoin, making them accessible to the over 3,000 Storage Providers in the Filecoin network.
Highlights
- Optimizations to the GPU algorithms were enabled for the specific computations that are being employed in the Filecoin SNARKs. These include multi-scalar multiplications (MSM), number theoretic transformations (NTT), and Poseidon hashing, three core computations found in many zk proof systems.
- Specific improvements were achieved via the use of optimized assembly that improves the efficiency of large integer arithmetic, more efficient implementations of algorithms, and/or improved kernel implementation that leverages more efficient data transfers.
- Supranational, in collaboration with Protocol Labs and the DSA, have defined a ‘SNARK-as-a-Service’ API which will allow these proofs to be outsourced to providers who specialize in proof computations, thereby further simplifying operations and enabling specialization in the Filecoin ecosystem.
