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We initiate the study of a proof system model that naturally combines interactive proofs (IPs) and probabilistically-checkable proofs (PCPs), and generalizes interactive PCPs (which consist of a PCP followed by an IP). We define an interactive oracle proof (IOP) to be an interactive proof in which the verifier is not required to read the prover’s messages in their entirety; rather, the verifier has oracle access to the prover’s messages, and may probabilistically query them. IOPs retain the expressiveness of PCPs, capturing NEXP rather than only PSPACE, and also the flexibility of IPs, allowing multiple rounds of communication with the prover. IOPs have already found several applications, including unconditional zero knowledge [BCGV16], constant-rate constant-query probabilistic checking [BCG+16], and doubly-efficient constant-round IPs for polynomial-time bounded-space computations [RRR16].

We …