Project proposal: CraneZisk

Index document: CraneZisk index

Project Info

Project Name: CraneZisk

Team: Andrew Borg in collaboration with Polygon

Expected timeline: October 2024 - February 2025

Summary

The proposal to build an efficient compiler from Rust to Zisk zkVM based on the Cranelift toolchain.

Background

During collaboration between Polygon Hermez and NEAR we've built a backend for Cranelift compiler that can compile Rust and WASM programs to zkEVM and zkASM.

This approach showed a lot of promise, being able to generate zkASM for Keccak hash function benchmark with performance within 10x (cycles) of the hand-written state machine.

The next leap in performance can come from switching to zkVM that is better tailored to compilation from Cranelift IR (efficient 32-bit operations, efficient access to registers and memory).

Zisk is the new zkVM memory-based architecture that would be a great target for Cranelift compilation.

Stages and objectives

Problem Formulation: Enable efficient compilation of Rust and WASM programs to Zisk

1. PoC Cranelift-based compiler from Rust to Zisk

Goal: Build a proof-of-concept Cranelift Zisk backend that can compile multiple representative Rust benchmarks and surpass the performance of RiscV based backend:

• Iterative SHA256
• Iterative Keccak
• ECDSA verification
• Fibonacci numbers

Note, that we don't aim to support all possible Rust programs at this point and instead focus on benchmarks only.

Time-estimate: 2 months of work by Andrew with basic support from Zisk team

2. Feature-complete compiler from Rust to Zisk

Goals:

• Extend the PoC Zisk backend to support all relevant Rust programs (e.g. feature parity with SP1)
• Onboard engineer(s) from Polygon to co-own of the project

Time-estimate: 2 months of work by Andrew + 1 collaborator from Polygon

3. Production-ready compiler from Rust to Zisk

Goals:

• Compiler easily available to the end-users
• High test coverage
• Performance regression tests

Time-estimate: 2 months of work by Andrew + 2 collaborators from Polygon

Timeline

Item	Date	Note
Submit Proposal	13 August
Review Proposal
Start implementation
Present results

Reference

1. ZKWASM project index
2. Risc0 benchmarks
3. Risc0 examples