ZK Basics | Ep. 8: Why ZK proofs cost so much Verifying a proof takes milliseconds. Creating one is the expensive part. Here's where the money goes: 1. The computation gets rewritten. Your program has to be turned into a form math can prove — a circuit. Nothing about this step is free. 2. Proving is heavy. Building the proof can take thousands of times more compute than just running the program normally. 3. Specialized hardware. Serious proving runs on GPUs and custom chips, which is why there's a whole industry around proving infrastructure. 4. It's dropping fast. Costs have fallen by orders of magnitude in a few years, which is exactly why ZK moved from papers to production. The tradeoff: pay once to prove, let everyone verify cheaply forever. Save this one💜