How to Program ZKPs

Abstract. Succinct Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) are a powerful cryptographic primitive that allow a prover to convince a verifier that a computation executed correctly with an extremely short and quickly-checkable proof. ZKPs are seeing wide deployment in decentralized systems as they promise to greatly improve scalability and privacy without compromising on the integrity guarantees of these systems. However, how does one actually write and prove program executions with a ZKP?

In this talk, we will see the approaches adopted by practitioners and researchers for proving programs in ZKPs, focusing on the following three approaches:

• Hardware Description Languages
• Custom DSLs
• Embedded DSLs

We will see code examples as well as have some time for hands-on demos.

Joint work with: Alex Ozdemir (Stanford University)

[Slides]