It’s a summary of article from Georgios Konstantopoulos and my understanding.

Introduction

ZKPs are slow and expensive to produce due to a large number of expensive math operations.

ZKP usage

• Outsourced Verifiable Computation

ZKPs allow a third party provider to also output a proof of computational integrity which guarantees the output you received is correct.

• Private Computation

ZKPs allow you to selectively hide some or all inputs around a computational statement.

Optimization is necessary

ZKP is generated like below:

1. Computation Expression
2. Generate proof

The computation in proof generation mostly reside in:

1. MSMs: Multiplications over large vectors of numbers (field or group elements), specifically variable-base and fixed-base multi-scalar multiplications
   • Typically 70% time
   • Vector of 2e25 elements
   • Can be parallel but still slow with hundereds of cores
2. FFTs: Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs) and Inverse FFTs
   • Typically 30% time
   • Data shuffling
   • Not suitable for computing cluster and need much bandwidth

Hardware Solution

Conclusions

Mining Market:

• Bitcoin: $15B
• Ethereum: $17B
• ZKP: may be similar size to Bitcoin/Ethereum

My understanding

1. GPU is the best option from the developer’s perspective, as programming friendliness is very important in industry’s early stage and there are more than 2 million GPU developers worldwide.
2. In the case when cost & power is more important, FPGA is the best option.
3. Once the ZKP mining industry really emerges, ASIC will prevail, just like bitmain’s product.

Reference