Way to verify vkey for a circuit? about snarkjs HOT 3 OPEN

Hi! Yes, you can safely share proving key with the verifier. It doesn't leak any knowledge about the witness.
It's up to the verifier to verify zkeys and vkeys, or get them from a repository / public registry where someone else has done that and just trust it.

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Is there a faster approach?

The problem with this approach is that the snarkjs zkey verify command takes about as long as generating the zkey. So for large circuits this quickly becomes unrealistic for the verifier to do.

If there is no current faster approach, it might be useful to research one. I can't imagine it would be too difficult to figure out so maybe it's worth me having a go at figuring it out?

For more modern snarks.. is there even an issue with computational time? Or is it just g16?

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Usually verifier would get the verification key from a trusted source and keep it.

If source is not trusted or just to be sure verifier may check that it corresponds to a specific circuit, but it's a one time procedure and after that there's no need in zkey (and r1cs) file on verifier side.

Then verifier just verifies proofs with the verification key stored locally.

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