Full Auth in 1.28ms: 209x Faster Than a Blink

A human blink takes 300,000 microseconds. H33 completes full post-quantum authentication in 1,431 microseconds. That means we can authenticate you 209 times before your eye finishes closing.

This isn't a theoretical benchmark. It's production performance, measured on standard cloud infrastructure (AWS c8g.metal-48xl with AWS Graviton4 (Neoverse V2)), processing real authentication requests.

Why This Matters

Zero-knowledge proofs have traditionally been considered "slow cryptography." Early ZK systems took seconds or even minutes to generate proofs. This made them impractical for real-time authentication.

H33 changes this equation entirely. At 1.28ms, full authentication is now faster than most database queries. It's faster than network round-trips. It's faster than you can perceive.

The Technical Achievement

Reaching 1.28ms required innovations across the entire stack:

• Optimized circuit design: Our ZK circuits are specifically designed for authentication, eliminating unnecessary constraints
• Native Rust implementation: Critical paths bypass JavaScript entirely, using hand-optimized Rust with SIMD acceleration
• Proof caching: Repeated verifications hit our cache at 32µs (67x faster than cold verification)
• Parallel witness generation: Multi-threaded witness computation on modern CPUs

Real-World Impact

What does 1.28ms authentication mean in practice?

For users: Authentication feels instant. No loading spinners. No perceived delay. The security happens invisibly.

For developers: You can add ZK-based privacy to your authentication without performance concerns. The overhead is negligible.

For enterprises: At high-throughput authentication (batch mode), H33 scales to any demand. Black Friday traffic? No problem.

Benchmark Details

Our January 2026 benchmarks were conducted on:

• Infrastructure: AWS c8g.metal-48xl (AWS Graviton4 (Neoverse V2))
• Configuration: 192 vCPUs, 377 GiB RAM
• Workload: Production-representative authentication requests
• Measurement: End-to-end latency including all cryptographic operations

// Single ZK proof generation
const result = await h33.auth.generateProof({
  userId: 'user_123',
  claims: ['identity', 'age_over_18'],
  mode: 'turbo'
});
// Completes in 1.28ms

// Batch processing (1000 proofs)
const batchResult = await h33.auth.batchProof({
  requests: thousandUsers,
  mode: 'parallel'
});
// 116µs total = 8.6M proofs/second

The Complete Performance Picture

ZK proofs are just one part of our performance story. Here's how the full authentication stack performs:

• Full Auth (Turbo mode): 1.28ms - Complete biometric + ZK + blockchain attestation
• Session Resume: 50µs - Returning users authenticate nearly instantly
• Incremental Auth: <50µs - When only 5% of context changes, only verify the delta
• Biometric Matching: 260µs - FHE-encrypted face/fingerprint verification

Try It Yourself

These aren't numbers you have to take on faith. Sign up for a free API key and run your own benchmarks. The performance is real, reproducible, and available today.