Interactive proofs are great for intuition, but modern blockchains can't afford back-and-forth chats.

Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge (zk-SNARKs) solve this by compressing many challenge rounds into a single, short proof.

• Succinct - proof is always ~96 bytes (3 elliptic curve points), no matter how complex the computation

• Non-interactive - prover sends one message, verifier checks it

• Zero-knowledge - reveals nothing about your secrets

The catch: SNARKs need a trusted setup ceremony to generate proving keys.