01 — Proof system · Failure mode

Choosing on prover time and discovering the memory wall

Selection is driven by wall-clock benchmarks, and the system then cannot run in the target environment at all because peak resident memory exceeds what a browser, phone or affordable instance provides.

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

Mitigation

Measure peak memory on the actual target device early, and check whether the system supports streaming, chunked or continuation-based proving before committing.

Cite this page

MarketComp (2026). Choosing on prover time and discovering the memory wall. The ZK Field Manual (Version 1.3). MarketComp. https://zkpick.com/proof-systems/failure-modes/choosing-on-prover-time-and-discovering-the-memory-wall/

@misc{zkfieldmanual-choosing-on-prover-time-and-discovering-,
  title        = {Choosing on prover time and discovering the memory wall — The ZK Field Manual},
  author       = {MarketComp},
  year         = {2026},
  version      = {1.3},
  howpublished = {\url{https://zkpick.com/proof-systems/failure-modes/choosing-on-prover-time-and-discovering-the-memory-wall/}},
  note         = {Accessed: YYYY-MM-DD}
}