Zero-Knowledge Succinct Arguments with a Linear-Time Prover

We construct a zero knowledge argument system with polylogarithmic communication complexity where the prover runs in linear time and the verifier runs in polylogarithmic time. This achieves a central goal in the area of efficient zero knowledge. Our result is a direct consequence of a new interactive oracle proof (IOP) that simultaneously achieves linear-time proving and zero knowledge. We construct an IOP where, for the satisfiability of an N -gate arithmetic circuit over any field of size Ω(N), the prover uses O(N) field operations and the verifier uses polylog(N) field operations (with proof lengthO(N) and query complexity polylog(N)). Polylogarithmic verification is achieved in the holographic setting for every circuit (the verifier has oracle access to a linear-time-computable encoding of the circuit whose satisfiability is being proved).