Basics

Binius is a state-of-the-art cryptographic proof system that makes it possible to quickly and cheaply verify computations over sensitive data, in a privacy-preserving fashion. In the world of cryptography, Binius is known as a zero-knowledge (ZK) proof system. Because Binius uses binary fields as foundational primitives, we also sometimes refer to it as a binary proof system¹.

Zero-knowledge proofs are remarkable, almost magical, technology. They can be used to prove properties of encrypted data, without the verifier seeing the decryption, or properties of digitally signed data, without the verifier seeing the original message. They are used today for secure age verification in Google Wallet and private blockchain payments on Zcash.

Binius optimizes for proving computations over 64-bit words, making it the fastest proof system for proving standard hash functions like SHA2 and SHA3. Moreover, the Binius prover delivers top-notch performance on ARM64 and x86-64 processors, including modern mobile CPUs, making it a perfect choice for local ZK proving. The construction is itself hash-based, meaning Binius has a transparent setup, is post-quantum secure, and only relies on conservative cryptographic assumptions.

The system features a few more attractive cryptographic properties:

• Succinct proof size: proof sizes are generally in the range of 250 to 500 KiB, regardless of the size of the computation
• Post-quantum security: security does not depend on any cryptographic primitives which are known to be broken by quantum computers
• Publicly verifiable: proofs can be copied, shared, and verified by anyone

The open source Rust codebase contains

• a high-performance CPU prover,
• a simple and secure verifier,
• an easy-to-use Rust API for building circuits,
• a standard library of common circuit components,
• lots of examples to help get started!

Binius was originally developed by Irreducible's, with funding from Bain Capital Crypto and Paradigm. Open source contributors now continue research and development. The system builds directly on Irreducible's cryptography research into SNARKs over binary fields [DP26] [DP25].

Documentation

This documentation site has four high-level sections.

• This Basics section provides a high-level overview of what Binius is, the core concepts, and information about the project.
• Our Building section contains practical guides for how to build and prove applications using Binius64.
• Our Blueprint provides a detailed description of the Binius64 cryptographic protocol. Go here for a peek under the hood.
• Our Benchmarks contain up-to-date performance measurements for key benchmarks on different hardware platforms.

The code is available on GitHub at binius-zk/binius64, and the Rust docs are hosted at docs.binius.xyz.

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