Zero‐Knowledge Proof Enabled Blockchain Smart Contracts for Efficient Health Insurance System

ABSTRACT The digitization of healthcare insurance claims faces persistent challenges including data breaches, fraudulent submissions, and inefficiencies in verification and settlement. This paper presents a Zero‐Knowledge Succinct Non‐Interactive Argument of Knowledge (Zk‐SNARK) enabled blockchain framework deployed on the Polygon Proof of Stake (PoS) network for secure and privacy‐preserving health insurance processing. The proposed architecture integrates Attribute‐Based Encryption (ABE) for data confidentiality and the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) for authentication, ensuring end‐to‐end data integrity and access control. Experimental evaluation on the Polygon PoS testbed demonstrates a transaction cost of approximately $0.002, which is over 99% lower than Ethereum's 3–10 $ per transaction, while maintaining 100% resistance to data tampering, replay attacks, and transaction manipulation. Under the Polygon real network, the proposed framework supports a network‐level transaction capacity of up to 7000 transactions per second (TPS) under nominal operating conditions, with an approximately 9.3% reduction in effective capacity under stress scenarios, while maintaining 100% verification accuracy for all Zk‐SNARK proofs. The average on‐chain verification and settlement latency was measured at 4.7 s, confirming the system's suitability for real‐time healthcare claim settlement. These results validate that the proposed Zk‐SNARK enabled Polygon PoS framework offers a scalable, cost‐efficient, and cryptographically robust solution for healthcare insurance automation, outperforming existing blockchain implementations across security, efficiency, and economic performance metrics.