03 — Auditing · Failure mode

Public input encoding mismatch

The circuit and the verifier disagree about how public inputs are ordered, packed, hashed or field-reduced. A proof about one statement is accepted as a proof about another, without any component behaving incorrectly in isolation.

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

Mitigation

Define the encoding once, in the specification, and test round-trip equivalence across every implementation of it — circuit, prover, on-chain verifier and client.

Cite this page

MarketComp (2026). Public input encoding mismatch. The ZK Field Manual (Version 1.3). MarketComp. https://zkpick.com/audit/failure-modes/public-input-encoding-mismatch/

@misc{zkfieldmanual-public-input-encoding-mismatch,
  title        = {Public input encoding mismatch — The ZK Field Manual},
  author       = {MarketComp},
  year         = {2026},
  version      = {1.3},
  howpublished = {\url{https://zkpick.com/audit/failure-modes/public-input-encoding-mismatch/}},
  note         = {Accessed: YYYY-MM-DD}
}