Powers of Tau Public Parameters (BN254)

This repository contains the Powers of Tau public parameters generated over the BN254 curve.

The parameters were produced through a large-scale multi-party Trusted Setup ceremony organized by ZEROBASE, recognized as the largest Trusted Setup ceremony ever held, with a record-breaking 37,209 contributions worldwide.

These files are the output of Groth16 Phase 1 (Powers of Tau), but they are general-purpose and can be reused across multiple zero-knowledge proof systems and polynomial commitment schemes.

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📖 Background

Zero-knowledge proof systems often require a Structured Reference String (SRS) as part of their cryptographic setup.
The first stage — the Powers of Tau (Phase 1) — produces universal parameters that can be reused across circuits and protocols.

Key properties:

• ✅ Circuit-independent: not bound to any specific application
• ✅ Reusable: one ceremony can serve many protocols
• ✅ Secure: as long as one participant is honest, the resulting parameters are trustworthy

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🌍 The ZEROBASE Guinness Challenge

ZEROBASE launched a groundbreaking initiative aiming to set a Guinness World Record:
"Most contributions to a trusted setup for a Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) in a 3-month timeframe."

Through this global challenge, we achieved two major goals:

1. Provide a strong foundation for gnark: establishing a universal trusted setup that becomes a core component for future gnark circuit development.
2. Promote ZKP technology worldwide: demonstrating the collective power of the cryptography community and raising awareness of privacy-preserving technologies.

Why more participants matter

• Multi-party contributions: the more independent participants, the lower the risk of a single point of failure.
• Toxic waste disposal: intermediate secret values generated during the process must be discarded; if even one participant discards their secret, the system is secure.
• Security guarantee: with 37,209 contributions, the probability that all participants were dishonest is negligible — more contributors directly translate to stronger security and trust.

Trusted setup ceremonies are critical in blockchain and privacy-preserving technologies. For example, Ethereum relied on trusted setups when deploying scalability mechanisms. ZEROBASE’s record-breaking ceremony set a new standard for openness, inclusivity, and verifiable cryptographic foundations.

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🔄 General Applicability

Although these parameters originated from Groth16 Phase 1, they are not limited to Groth16. They can be reused in multiple protocols, including but not limited to:

• gnark (Go ecosystem, Phase 2 setup for circuit-specific proving/verifying keys)
• Groth16 (circom/snarkjs workflow)
• PLONK (requires powers of tau as its universal SRS)
• KZG Polynomial Commitments (powers of tau form the foundation of the scheme)
• Other polynomial IOP-based protocols (e.g., Marlin, Sonic, Halo2)

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📂 Files

• bn254_pow22.ptau
  • Public parameter file, where pow22 supports up to (2^{22}) constraints.
• checksums.txt
  • Contains SHA256 hashes for integrity verification.

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✅ Verification

sha256sum bn254_pow22.ptau