Lasso and Jolt represent a shift in how we build SNARKs. Rather than encoding every computation as a massive arithmetic circuit, Lasso shows that the bulk of the work can be replaced by lookups into structured tables, thus enabling the lookup singularity - yielding a prover that is faster by orders of magnitude. Jolt then applies this insight to build a practical zkVM for RISC-V.

The papers are dense. They sit at the intersection of sumcheck, GKR, R1CS, sparse polynomial commitments, and offline memory checking - each of which has its own body of literature. Roping in Lasso is a self-contained resource that walks through all of these building blocks from scratch, in a single document, so that you can understand Lasso without constantly cross-referencing half a dozen other papers.

The report covers:

1. GKR Protocol - The interactive proof for layered arithmetic circuits.
2. A Specialized GKR Protocol - A faster GKR protocol tailored to specifically grand-product arguments, employed by both Lasso and Spartan
3. Spartan - Encoding R1CS satisfiability as a polynomial identity verified via sumcheck
4. Spark - A sparse polynomial commitment scheme based on offline memory checking
5. Lasso - The lookup argument itself

Each chapter builds directly on the previous one, with worked examples and full proofs throughout. The only prerequisites are basic finite field arithmetic, comfort with polynomial notation (including multivariate polynomials) and at least some notion of interactive arguments/proofs.