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Towards Practical Zero-Knowledge Proof for PSPACE

Published: November 19, 2025 | arXiv ID: 2511.15071v1

By: Ashwin Karthikeyan , Hengyu Liu , Kuldeep S. Meel and more

Potential Business Impact:

Lets computers prove hard math problems are true.

Business Areas:
Quantum Computing Science and Engineering

Efficient zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) have been restricted to NP statements so far, whereas they exist for all statements in PSPACE. This work presents the first practical zero-knowledge (ZK) protocols for PSPACE-complete statements by enabling ZK proofs of QBF (Quantified Boolean Formula) evaluation. The core idea is to validate quantified resolution proofs (Q-Res) in ZK. We develop an efficient polynomial encoding of Q-Res proofs, enabling proof validation through low-overhead arithmetic checks. We also design a ZK protocol to prove knowledge of a winning strategy related to the QBF, which is often equally important in practice. We implement our protocols and evaluate them on QBFEVAL. The results show that our protocols can verify 72% of QBF evaluations via Q-Res proof and 82% of instances' winning strategies within 100 seconds, for instances where such proofs or strategies can be obtained.

Country of Origin
πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦ Canada, United States

Repos / Data Links

Page Count
36 pages

Category
Computer Science:
Cryptography and Security