Stanford Professor Unveils New Zero-Knowledge Proof Protocol for Bitcoin

According to ChainCatcher, Stanford University professor and Babylon co-founder David Tse has announced the official release of BABE (BAbylon-BErkeley), a new Groth16 zero-knowledge proof verification protocol designed for Bitcoin. This protocol significantly reduces initialization and storage costs by over a thousand times compared to existing optimal solutions. BABE integrates two key cryptographic innovations. The first is Witness Encryption on Linear Pairing, which simplifies the complex multi-pairing operations in Groth16 verification to a single scalar multiplication on the BN254 elliptic curve. The second innovation utilizes the recently proposed Argo MAC obfuscation primitive, transforming the scalar multiplication into vector homomorphic MAC for efficient computation. David Tse stated that BABE will be launched alongside the Babylon Trustless Bitcoin Vault's alpha testnet in February 2026. The goal is to achieve lower-cost and more scalable zero-knowledge proof verification capabilities within the Bitcoin ecosystem.