Benchmarks

MerkleForge uses Criterion benchmarks in the unpublished merkle-bench crate to compare hash adapters, tree variants, proof generation, proof verification, and other Rust Merkle libraries. Criterion reports mean, median, and standard deviation to filter out noise.

Lower latency is better; higher throughput is better. For the latest CI numbers with links to every Criterion report, see the live benchmark explorer.

Environment


CPU	11th Gen Intel Core i7-1185G7 @ 3.00 GHz, 4 cores / 8 threads, x86_64
RAM	15 GiB
OS	Linux 7.0.0-28-generic x86_64
Rust	rustc 1.97.1 (8bab26f4f 2026-07-14)
Date	2026-08-17

Hash function throughput

cargo bench --bench hash_throughput

Algorithm	32 B latency	64 B latency	1 MB throughput
SHA-256	109.60 ns	177.40 ns	1.28 GiB/s
Keccak-256	1.23 µs	660.99 ns	291.12 MiB/s
BLAKE3	230.70 ns	247.83 ns	5.99 GiB/s

Binary Merkle tree

cargo bench --bench binary_tree

Leaves	Construction (SHA-256)	Construction (BLAKE3)	Proof gen	Proof verify
100	147.19 µs	140.96 µs	45.22 ns	1.09 µs
1,000	1.80 ms	1.83 ms	57.21 ns	1.87 µs
10,000	30.53 ms	39.07 ms	74.18 ns	2.06 µs
100,000	268.23 ms	274.93 ms	78.69 ns	2.95 µs

Construction builds a fresh BinaryMerkleTree<H>. Proof generation uses LeafIndex(0). Proof verification checks the proof against the recorded root and the original leaf bytes.

Sparse Merkle tree

cargo bench --bench sparse_tree (SHA-256)

Existing keys	Insert	Proof gen	Proof verify	Non-membership proof	Non-membership verify
10	189.85 µs	244.18 µs	91.43 µs	268.20 µs	74.38 µs
100	2.11 ms	2.25 ms	75.74 µs	2.32 ms	76.86 µs
1,000	20.24 ms	20.32 ms	81.58 µs	20.12 ms	71.28 µs
10,000	181.05 ms	198.84 ms	63.00 µs	203.49 ms	76.41 µs

Batch updates

Batch size	Batch insert	Sequential insert	Speedup
10	288.97 µs	1.53 ms	5.30×
100	2.08 ms	88.12 ms	42.46×
1,000	20.33 ms	8.69 s	427.72×

Merkle Patricia trie

cargo bench --bench patricia_trie (Keccak-256)

Existing entries	Insert	Get	Proof gen	Proof verify
10	20.61 µs	159.00 ns	not captured	not captured
100	217.63 µs	200.07 ns	not captured	not captured
1,000	2.11 ms	270.26 ns	not captured	not captured
10,000	not captured	387.44 ns	not captured	not captured

State-root timings (patricia_trie/state_root) were not captured in this run.

Energy-aware construction

cargo bench --bench bench_energy builds a 100,000-leaf binary tree.

Algorithm	100K construction time	CPU cycles	Package energy
SHA-256	463.52 ms	not captured	not captured
Keccak-256	1.49 s	not captured	not captured
BLAKE3	261.02 ms	not captured	not captured

These are Criterion wall-clock numbers only. See Profiling & energy to collect RAPL counters.

MerkleForge vs `rs-merkle` vs `merkle_light`

cargo bench --bench comparison

Metric	MerkleForge	`rs-merkle`	`merkle_light`
10K leaf construction	22.77 ms	3.69 ms	2.29 ms
Proof size (10K tree)	469 bytes	448 bytes	512 bytes
Proof verification	1.84 µs	6.39 µs	1.78 µs

Construction uses deterministic 32-byte leaves for all libraries.
rs-merkle receives pre-hashed SHA-256 leaves, matching its public API.
Proof size is the serialized proof byte count reported by each library.

Reproduce

git clone https://github.com/1888-Labs/MerkleForge.git
cd MerkleForge
 
# Everything (long: the Patricia insert group alone can take many minutes)
cargo bench --workspace
xdg-open target/criterion/report/index.html   # `open` on macOS
 
# Focused groups
cargo bench --bench hash_throughput
cargo bench --bench binary_tree
cargo bench --bench sparse_tree
cargo bench --bench patricia_trie
cargo bench --bench comparison
cargo bench --bench bench_energy
 
# Print comparative proof sizes
MERKLEFORGE_PRINT_COMPARISON_SIZES=1 cargo bench --bench comparison -- --list

Record the machine, kernel, CPU governor, Rust version, and command next to any numbers you publish. Results are hardware-specific: compare trends across machines, not absolute values.

Reading the tables

Latency: time for one operation.
Throughput: bytes or elements processed per second.
Proof generation: time to produce the witness sent to a verifier.
Proof verification: time for a stateless client to check the witness against a trusted root.
Proof size: bytes sent over the network or stored as evidence.

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