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ZK-SNARKs are general-purpose succinct zero knowledge proof technology that can be used for all sorts of usecases ranging from verifiable computation to privacy-preserving cryptocurrency. They come with much simpler cryptographic assumptions, avoiding the need for elliptic curves, pairings and the knowledge-of-exponent assumption. This also means that they are secure even against attackers with quantum computers. However, this comes at a cost: the size of a proof goes up from 288 bytes to a few hundred kilobytes.