Microsoft’s Magnetar Research Could Matter to Blockchain Proof Costs

TL;DR: Microsoft Research says its Magnetar system makes proofs of ordinary program execution faster while relying on standard hash-based cryptography. Zero-knowledge systems promise that a computation can be checked without trusting the machine that performed it. One reason they remain difficult to deploy is the cost of generating those proofs. Microsoft Research’s October 15 Magnetar announcement tackles that bottleneck using a virtual machine designed to prove ordinary programmes. The researchers say Magnetar supports code compiled from Rust, Go and C and performs between 10 and 39 times faster on average than certain comparable proving systems across their benchmarks. Verification takes roughly 12 milliseconds, according to Microsoft’s tests. The system is built around standard hash functions, a design intended to reduce reliance on cryptography vulnerable to future quantum attacks.

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