ZK WASM Meetup, September 2023

Index document

Timeline - 6-8 September 2023

Goal: Knowledge sharing, supporting ZK WASM work

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Agenda

September 6

• Presentation: (1h) Andrei presents WASM and NEAR Contract Runtime

  • Runtime presentation
    • High level flow: https://nomicon.io/RuntimeSpec/Components/
    • Contract preparation
    • Host functions
  • WASM Spec and code examples
  • Cranelift opcodes and ZK ASM lowering rules
    • Show example for WASMI, generated ops
    • Rust to Cranelift compiler

• Brainstorming: (2h) Andrei and Bowen: Can we make proving fast enough to be usable in NEAR?

  • How can we optimize for latency?
  • How can we aggregate proofs?
  • What can we do with “Compiler JIT bombs”

• Presentation: (1h) Polygon team: Walk through Polygon Hermez architecture

  • From moment user submits transaction till transaction is included onchain
  • How long does aggregation take now?
  • Can we use tree structure vs linear structure?

• 14:00 - 15:00 Polygon folks on an internal meeting

September 7

• Presentation: (1h) Jordi presents PIL2/Future of Proving/Plonky3?
  • Anything that will change for users of PIL/ZK ASM?
  • Hector: More recent developments in ZK (e.g. Lasso, Jolt), main ideas in Plonky 3
    • E.g. if we want to prove 1000 consecutive blocks or 1000 transactions
• Pair-programming: (2h) Andrei + Polygon, Setup development environment together
  • Go through Polygon Hermez repositories and understand their purpose
  • Set up tools for benchmarking and profiling proofs
  • Writing ZK ASM test suite with inputs
  • Tech setup from Andrei
    • WASM toolkit setup
    • Cranelift -> ZK ASM compiler from Andrei
  • Run the production prover (Try AWS instance?)
• Pair-programming: (2h) Felicia: Modifying the PIL and Processor
  • CALL and RETURN using the stack
  • Adding a new circuit for hash function like SHA256
  • Switch from 256 bit to 64 bit machine
  • Adding a new register

September 8

• Brainstorming: (2h) Bowen facilitates: "How we collaborate going forward?"
  • The focus of NEAR and Polygon team
  • Shared goals for a quarter
  • Code contributions
• Other VM types, e.g. Miden: https://github.com/0xPolygonMiden/miden-vm
  • Is this something we should look at for ZK WASM?

Notes

• Performance of 64 bit processor is 3 times faster, without storage and POSEIDON
  Proof (2**23 / 4) in 30s
  70k instructions per second
  In a big machine

Read hardware 10M instructions per second