04 — Trusted setup · Failure mode

Adopting a transcript that cannot serve your scheme

A large, reputable ceremony is adopted on the strength of its participant count, and only later does the team discover the transcript cannot back their proof system at all — most commonly, a Groth16 project reaching for a pure powers-of-tau/KZG SRS that carries no alpha- or beta-shifted powers.

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

Mitigation

Check scheme compatibility before curve and before size. Run your toolchain's phase-2 initialisation against the candidate artefact as the very first step, not after the ceremony has been planned.

Cite this page

MarketComp (2026). Adopting a transcript that cannot serve your scheme. The ZK Field Manual (Version 1.3). MarketComp. https://zkpick.com/ceremony/failure-modes/adopting-a-transcript-that-cannot-serve-your-scheme/

@misc{zkfieldmanual-adopting-a-transcript-that-cannot-serve-,
  title        = {Adopting a transcript that cannot serve your scheme — The ZK Field Manual},
  author       = {MarketComp},
  year         = {2026},
  version      = {1.3},
  howpublished = {\url{https://zkpick.com/ceremony/failure-modes/adopting-a-transcript-that-cannot-serve-your-scheme/}},
  note         = {Accessed: YYYY-MM-DD}
}