Dispatch 003

Edge verification, measured at 8.6 ms

Dispatch 003 · Published 2026-07-04 · Updated 2026-10-16

Grideōs measured its edge verifier checking a Groth16 proof in 8.6 milliseconds. What that makes possible, and what it does not.

Ironwall's verifier runs at edge.grideos.com. A #![no_std] Rust module compiled to WebAssembly checks Groth16 zero-knowledge proofs over the BN254 curve inside a single Cloudflare Workers isolate. A valid proof receives a signed JWT; an invalid one is rejected.

The numbers

• Groth16 verification: 8.6 ms
• WebAssembly binary after wasm-opt: 381 KB
• Warm round trip: about 123 ms

These are Grideōs' own measurements, first published in the ironwall-edge-bench repository on 8 April 2026, which also lists a cold-start round trip of about 298 ms and invalid-proof rejection in about 76 ms. No third party has validated them yet.

How a request is checked

A request carries 256 bytes: a 128-byte compressed Groth16 proof followed by four 32-byte BN254 scalars: nonce, timestamp, attestation_hash and y. Proofs outside a 500 ms window are rejected, and so are nonces the verifier has already seen, which limits replay of a captured proof. In the current version that nonce check is kept in memory.

What it makes possible

Verification fast enough to sit in the request path means a system can check a proof on every call, at the edge, instead of trusting a token issued somewhere else. That is the property Grideōs systems are designed to rely on when a record has to be checked by someone who cannot see the private data behind it.

What it does not do

Fast verification is one part of a trust layer, not the whole of it. The figures describe the verifier, not a complete product, and they are not a service-level commitment. The source is public: ironwall-verifier on GitHub.

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