zkDaily - 2026-02-22

零知识证明 zkDaily

ZKP Frontier Tracker 🎯

Sun

02.22

2026

UltraFold: Efficient Distributed BaseFold from Packed Interleaved Merkle Trees

Paper

https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/266

Wenhao Wang BaseFold PCS

Wang and Zhang proposed UltraFold, the first distributed BaseFold PCS supporting general polynomials, scaling to any number of workers while maintaining succinct proof size.

Notes

Transparent, code-based PCS like BaseFold are suitable for large-scale ZKPs but limited by single-machine capacity.
Existing distributed approaches have limitations: specific polynomial structures, proof size growth with workers, poor scalability.
UltraFold uses interleaved Merkle leaf layout for efficient distributed commitment/opening with one all-to-all exchange.
Packed Merkle trees reduce hashing overhead, lowering prover time and proof size.
Evaluation: 256 single-core workers handle 134M-coefficient polynomial in <2s, proof size 216KB.
Scheme avoids trusted setup, relies on standard hash assumptions, offers post-quantum security.

Collected by @icerdesign

零知识证明 zkDaily

Q&A Deep Dive 💬

Sun

02.22

2026

What core limitations of prior distributed attempts does UltraFold address?

It supports general polynomials, scales to any number of workers, and keeps proof size independent of worker count. This avoids communication blowup or proof inflation.

Why do packed Merkle trees reduce hashing overhead?

Packed structures batch multiple leaf values per node, reducing tree depth and total hash computations, which lowers prover time and proof size.

Why is proof size independence from worker count a key property?

If proof size grew with worker count, horizontal scaling would increase verification cost. UltraFold preserves succinctness, ensuring scalability does not harm verifier efficiency.

Prompted by @icerdesign