Zero-knowledge proofs have been really hot lately, with zkp and berv already on the spot market and considerable market discussion. But honestly, I think there's another protocol design worth taking a closer look at——Walrus.

Simply put, Walrus is a commitment and proof system for zero-knowledge proofs. It sounds a bit abstract, so let's break it down gradually.

**Background and Origins**

Walrus is developed by AZTEC, a privacy technology company that gained recognition for doing privacy transactions on Ethereum. From their early zk.money to the later Aztec Connect, these are all their works. So this protocol has some technical accumulation behind it.

**Core Objectives Are Clear**

Generate efficient off-chain proofs and on-chain verification, especially in scenarios where you need to hide transaction amounts and participant identities. In other words, protecting privacy while not being too time-consuming——this is a difficult problem.

**How It Works Technically**

First, it's built on top of the PLONK proof system. PLONK itself is a universal scheme that doesn't require a trusted setup. Walrus can be understood as a specialization and optimization of PLONK.

Where's the real highlight? Inner product arguments. This is the most computationally intensive part of ZK-SNARKs protocols. Walrus put work into this area, significantly improving proof generation speed through optimization.

Additionally, the protocol is hardware-friendly by design from the start. It fully leverages modern CPUs' SIMD instruction sets and GPU parallel computing capabilities to directly accelerate the entire process. This isn't just a theoretical solution.

**Relationship with Noir Programming Language**

Walrus occupies an important position in Aztec's Noir ecosystem. Noir allows developers to write private logic circuits with syntax similar to Rust. After compilation, developers can choose to use Walrus as the backend to generate proofs. This combination has quite a bit of imagination.

**Practical Use Cases**

Private transactions are straightforward——hiding transaction amounts and receiver identities when transferring on-chain. It's also useful in DeFi, where users can participate in decentralized finance without exposing position details. More broadly, identity and credential verification also apply. You can prove you have certain attributes (like age, qualifications) without revealing specific information.

These scenarios are actually real needs in Web3, not imaginary.

That's the basic situation with Walrus. I'll continue discussing its application development roadmap later, if there's interest in this topic.