Source: Solana; Translated by Jinse Finance xiaozou
You may not be very familiar with Solana's ZK (zero-knowledge) and verifiability fields, but they are definitely dark horses. This article will give you a quick understanding of ZK, verifiability, and privacy projects on Solana.
Overall, Solana infrastructure helps to:
Network performance
-- Save developers a thousand times the cost
-- Asynchronous execution
-- State growth solutions
Security
-- On-chain application privacy and confidentiality
-- Verifiability
-- Decentralized prover network
Even on Solana there are ZK-rollups!
Let’s take a look one by one:
-- Privacy and verifiability
-- Anonymity
-- Based on ZK's expansion and ZKVMs
-- ZK network expansion stack
-- ZK programs
Please note: For the sake of clarity, the following will be recategorized and may overlap.
1. Privacy and verifiability
Arcium helps provide privacy for on-chain applications by offering a trustless, verifiable framework for running cryptographic computations. For example: AI models can be trained using encrypted data, while DeFi can use it for confidential transactions.
Bonsol, launched by ANAGRAM, is a Solana-native verifiable computing system that enables developers to create:
A fully verifiable executable file of private or public data → mathematically guarantees its validity → integrates the results into Solana smart contracts for on-chain verification.
2. Anonymity
Darklake has created a privacy-focused swap trading AMM designed to become the first decentralized exchange on Solana to offer real-time, MEV-resistant order execution. Dark Protocol has developed an anonymous protocol managed by the market, supported by ZK-snarks.
3. ZKP-based expansion
ZK Compression is a new primitive on Solana launched by Light Protocol and Helius that features ZK proofs and state compression, reducing the rental costs for Solana application developers by a thousand times.
The team has developed ZK compression in the following areas:
-- Wallets (like Backpack): Users hold tokens without paying rent.
-- Consumer socialfi applications (like Tribe.run): Creators can send tokens at a lower cost.
-- Airdrop tools (like Helius Airship)
4. ZKVMs
RISC Zero and Succinct can help prove arbitrary on-chain computations, unrestricted by chain computations. This can support:
-- ZK-based Solana light client
-- Streamlined DePIN network
-- Secure seamless ZK login
5. Solana network expansion stack
zkSVM is being applied to:
-- Solforge: This network expansion stack uses ZKP methods and Light Protocol's ZK compression to support scalable state update flow proofs and LightSVM optimized for proof generation.
-- Termina: A platform for deploying SVM networks tailored for specific use cases, reducing latency, enhancing privacy, and lowering computation costs.
-- Sonic SVM: A SVM stack aimed at games and applications that is scaling through Hypergrid with ZK.
-- bulletxyz: A super low-latency rollup developed by ZetaMarkets that is scaling to extremely high throughput, with all state transitions being provable. Additionally, teams like Aerius Labs are conducting ZK proof-related experiments.
6. ZK programs
Other initiatives such as Anza's ZK token proof program support confidential transfers—encrypted SPL token balances and transaction amounts to protect privacy for use cases like accounts payable.
From recently released ZK compression to various upcoming system calls, Solana is becoming a robust ZK engine. This article is just a brief summary to help everyone understand the early developments of ZK and verifiability on Solana.
