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:

FRI layer checks — 9.2us

Constraint evaluation — 7.8us

Merkle path verification — 5.1us

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)

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The cached result is served in 85 nanoseconds. Not faster math.…