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01 — Proof system · Proof system

PLONK and the PLONKish family

Pairing-based SNARK, universal SRS

In one paragraph

PLONK and the PLONKish family: Pairing-based SNARK, universal SRS. Setup: Universal, updatable. Proof size: Sub-kilobyte. On-chain verification: Practical; above Groth16. PQ: No. Recursion: Well-exercised. Maturity: Production; most common deployed family. Prover cost profile: 256-bit-field FFTs dominate; custom gates and lookups trade prover work for constraint count. Peak prover memory: SRS and witness polynomials resident; comparable to Groth16 at equal size. Off-chain verifier: Milliseconds. Implementations and maintainers: Barretenberg / UltraHonk (Aztec), gnark (Consensys), plonky2 (Polygon Zero lineage), Kimchi (o1Labs), Halo2 forks. Where it is measured: Vendor-published only; no neutral cross-implementation suite. Choose it when: General-purpose circuits where churn is expected and a per-circuit ceremony would be painful, and where on-chain verification is required but need not be absolutely minimal.

By MarketComp Updated v1.3 About the authors Changelog
Setup
Universal, updatable
Proof size
Sub-kilobyte
On-chain verification
Practical; above Groth16
PQ
No
Recursion
Well-exercised
Maturity
Production; most common deployed family
Selection matrix · as PLONK family · see the row in context
Prover cost profile
256-bit-field FFTs dominate; custom gates and lookups trade prover work for constraint count
Peak prover memory
SRS and witness polynomials resident; comparable to Groth16 at equal size
Off-chain verifier
Milliseconds
Implementations and maintainers
Barretenberg / UltraHonk (Aztec), gnark (Consensys), plonky2 (Polygon Zero lineage), Kimchi (o1Labs), Halo2 forks
Where it is measured
Vendor-published only; no neutral cross-implementation suite
Prover profile · as PLONK family · see the row in context

What it is

A permutation-argument-based universal SNARK over a custom-gate arithmetisation — selector columns, copy constraints, optional lookup columns. One SRS serves all circuits up to a size bound. The most frequently occurring family among deployed on-chain verifiers.

Strengths and tradeoffs

Strengths
  • Universal, updatable SRS — one ceremony, many circuits, no per-circuit phase two
  • Flexible arithmetisation: custom gates and lookups express non-arithmetic operations efficiently
  • Verifier cost close to Groth16 and still practical on-chain
  • Very large ecosystem with many independent implementations
Tradeoffs
  • Larger proofs and higher gas than Groth16
  • Not post-quantum
  • Prover requires large-field FFTs, the main bottleneck at scale
  • Arithmetisation flexibility is also a footgun — custom gates and lookup tables are a common source of underconstrained circuits
  • 'PLONK' names a family, not one artefact: two implementations may share little

Choose it whenGeneral-purpose circuits where churn is expected and a per-circuit ceremony would be painful, and where on-chain verification is required but need not be absolutely minimal.

Direct answers that mention it
Maintained implementations

Construction by Gabizon, Williamson and Ciobotaru (Aztec, 2019). Implementations: Barretenberg / UltraHonk (Aztec), gnark (Consensys), plonky2 (Polygon Zero lineage), Kimchi (o1Labs), Halo2 forks

Maturity: Production; most common deployed family · License: n/a (construction) · eprint.iacr.org ↗

How to decide
Other proof systems in §01
Groth16FRI-based STARKsHalo2 with IPA, and Halo2 with KZGNova, SuperNova and HyperNovaBinius and binary-field systemsSTIR and WHIRGKR-based systemsSpartanBulletproofsLookup arguments: Plookup, LogUp, cq, Lasso/Shout/Twist

Sources cited on this page · 4

  1. PLONK — permutations over Lagrange bases for oecumenical noninteractive argumentspaper
  2. fflonk — a fast-Fourier inspired verifier efficient variant of PLONKpaper
  3. HyperPlonk — PLONK with linear-time prover and high-degree custom gatespaper
  4. Plonky3 — polynomial IOP toolkit over small fieldsproject

All 40 sources for §01 are listed on the section page →

Cite this page 
MarketComp (2026). PLONK and the PLONKish family. The ZK Field Manual (Version 1.3). MarketComp. https://zkpick.com/proof-systems/plonk/
@misc{zkfieldmanual-plonk-and-the-plonkish-family,
  title        = {PLONK and the PLONKish family — The ZK Field Manual},
  author       = {MarketComp},
  year         = {2026},
  version      = {1.3},
  howpublished = {\url{https://zkpick.com/proof-systems/plonk/}},
  note         = {Accessed: YYYY-MM-DD}
}