a16z Crypto releases open-source zkVM Lattice Jolt, with quantum-resistant capabilities.

a16z Crypto has announced the release of a new version of its open-source zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM), Lattice Jolt. The update switches the underlying cryptography from elliptic curves to lattice cryptography, making the system quantum-resistant, and boosts both prover and verifier speeds by 2 to 3 times. Its proof size currently stands at under 100KB, which a16z Crypto claims is the smallest proof of any post-quantum zkVM. Lattice Jolt uses a novel polynomial commitment scheme called Akita, built on the Module-SIS lattice hardness assumption, with a target 128-bit security level. Akita was developed by LayerZero’s research and engineering team in collaboration with teams from Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Southern California, and a16z Crypto. Performance-wise, Lattice Jolt can prove over 2 million RISC-V cycles per second on a CPU-only device; with Apple Metal GPU acceleration, it exceeds 10 million cycles on a MacBook. The prover’s memory footprint has also dropped from roughly 300 bytes per cycle to 200 bytes, supporting proof generation for millions of compute cycles on mobile phones. The project will add additional zero-knowledge functionality via an upcoming academic paper.