How We Made STARK Verification 294x Faster

STARK verification takes 25 microseconds per proof. That sounds fast until you are verifying 100,000 proofs per second.

We got it to 85 nanoseconds. 294x. Here is how.

The Problem

STARK verification is O(log^2(n)). The four steps:

1. FRI layer checks — 9.2us
2. Constraint evaluation — 7.8us
3. Merkle path verification — 5.1us
4. OOD consistency check — 2.9us

Total: 25 microseconds. Repeated on every request.

The Fix

Verify once. Cache the result with a computation fingerprint:

SHA3-256(proof_bytes || verification_key || constraints || domain_params)

The cached result is served in 85 nanoseconds. Not faster math. No math at all.

Results

Metric	Before	After
Latency	25us	85ns
Speedup	—	294x
100K/sec CPU	2.5s	8.5ms

Every cached result is signed by three post-quantum families (ML-DSA-65, FALCON-512, SLH-DSA) and independently verifiable.

Try It

brew tap h33ai-postquantum/tap && brew install cachee

Deep dive: STARK Verification: From 25us to 85ns

More: ZK Proof Caching | What is Verifiable Computation Caching? | Install