---
title: "A transparent system that quietly reintroduces a setup"
description: "The team selects a setup-free proving system and announces that no trusted setup is needed — and then, to make on-chain verification affordable, wraps the…"
type: "failure-mode"
url: "https://zkpick.com/ceremony/failure-modes/a-transparent-system-that-quietly-reintroduces-a-setup/"
section: "04 Running or reusing a trusted setup"
authors:
  - "MarketComp"
publisher: "MarketComp"
version: "1.3"
updated: "2026-09-12"
license: "CC-BY-4.0"
json: "https://zkpick.com/data/ceremony/failure-modes/a-transparent-system-that-quietly-reintroduces-a-setup.json"
---

*By MarketComp. Updated 2026-09-12. Version 1.3. CC BY 4.0.*

# A transparent system that quietly reintroduces a setup

The team selects a setup-free proving system and announces that no trusted setup is needed — and then, to make on-chain verification affordable, wraps the final proof in a pairing-based SNARK. That wrapper circuit has its own trusted setup, so the system does depend on one after all, often on parameters inherited from a ceremony nobody on the team examined.

**Mitigation:** Trace the trust assumption all the way to what the chain actually verifies. If a wrapper is used, its parameters are in scope: name their provenance, verify that transcript, and describe the assumption in user-facing documentation rather than claiming the system is setup-free.