03 — Auditing · Failure mode

Circuit and verifier version drift

The deployed verifying key no longer corresponds to the audited circuit, because of a recompilation, a toolchain upgrade, or a manual key copy. Nothing detects the mismatch until proofs fail — or worse, until they succeed against the wrong relation.

By MarketComp Updated 2026-09-12 v1.3 About the authors Changelog

Mitigation

Pin the hash of circuit artefacts and verifying keys in CI and on-chain, fail the build on mismatch, and make the deployed key hash publicly checkable against the audited commit.

Cite this page

MarketComp (2026). Circuit and verifier version drift. The ZK Field Manual (Version 1.3). MarketComp. https://zkpick.com/audit/failure-modes/circuit-and-verifier-version-drift/

@misc{zkfieldmanual-circuit-and-verifier-version-drift,
  title        = {Circuit and verifier version drift — The ZK Field Manual},
  author       = {MarketComp},
  year         = {2026},
  version      = {1.3},
  howpublished = {\url{https://zkpick.com/audit/failure-modes/circuit-and-verifier-version-drift/}},
  note         = {Accessed: YYYY-MM-DD}
}