04 — Trusted setup · Failure mode

A transparent system that quietly reintroduces a setup

The team selects a setup-free proving system and announces that no trusted setup is needed — and then, to make on-chain verification affordable, wraps the final proof in a pairing-based SNARK. That wrapper circuit has its own trusted setup, so the system does depend on one after all, often on parameters inherited from a ceremony nobody on the team examined.

By MarketComp Updated 2026-09-12 v1.3 About the authors Changelog

Mitigation

Trace the trust assumption all the way to what the chain actually verifies. If a wrapper is used, its parameters are in scope: name their provenance, verify that transcript, and describe the assumption in user-facing documentation rather than claiming the system is setup-free.

Cite this page

MarketComp (2026). A transparent system that quietly reintroduces a setup. The ZK Field Manual (Version 1.3). MarketComp. https://zkpick.com/ceremony/failure-modes/a-transparent-system-that-quietly-reintroduces-a-setup/

@misc{zkfieldmanual-a-transparent-system-that-quietly-reintr,
  title        = {A transparent system that quietly reintroduces a setup — The ZK Field Manual},
  author       = {MarketComp},
  year         = {2026},
  version      = {1.3},
  howpublished = {\url{https://zkpick.com/ceremony/failure-modes/a-transparent-system-that-quietly-reintroduces-a-setup/}},
  note         = {Accessed: YYYY-MM-DD}
}