Succinct unveils Flock SNARK with 170x SHA-256 and 245x Keccak proving overhead

Succinct introduced Flock, a SNARK for proving batches of standard hash functions at under 250x native compute cost on a single Apple M4 Max core. The prototype hits 82,100 BLAKE3 compressions/sec, 42,100 SHA-256 compressions/sec, and 30,700 Keccak-f[1600] permutations/sec, with 10-core BLAKE3 throughput above 660,000/sec. The tradeoff is explicit: Flock gives up general-purpose zkVM flexibility for fixed Boolean circuits, making it especially relevant for hash-heavy post-quantum signatures, Lean VM work, and future SP1 speedups, but Succinct says it is not production-ready yet.

TLDR by @Benthic