ZKM Project Template

The Project Template creates an end-to-end Ziren project: a guest program proved by the Ziren zkVM, a host that executes it and generates proofs, and the on-chain Solidity verifier for the proofs.

It targets Ziren V2.0: the Ziren crates come from the main branch of ProjectZKM/Ziren, and the verifier contracts are the v2.0.0 ones in contracts/src/v2.0.0.

Two provers are available:

• Local prover: generate proofs on your own machine.
• Network prover: generate proofs on the ZKM proof network.

Running diagram

Getting Started

Install the Ziren toolchain (release 20260917 or later) and follow the instructions:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ProjectZKM/toolchain/refs/heads/main/setup.sh | sh
source ~/.zkm-toolchain/env

After source ~/.zkm-toolchain/env the host builds with the Ziren toolchain's cargo; without it, rustup builds the host with the nightly pinned in rust-toolchain.toml, the one Ziren itself is built with. The guest is always built with the Ziren toolchain.

Requirements

• Local proving: x86_64 Linux. Core and compressed proofs of this example need a few GB of memory; Groth16 and PLONK proofs need about 80 GB, and Go 1.23 or later for the gnark prover (Ziren's go.mod declares go 1.23.0).
• Network proving: x86_64 Linux, a registered address (apply here) and the network's client certificates.

Note

All commands below run from the repository root unless they cd first.

Running the project

There are four ways to run this project:

• Execute the program.
• Generate a core proof.
• Generate a compressed proof.
• Generate an EVM-compatible (Groth16 or PLONK) proof.

The guest program is built automatically by host/build.rs whenever the host is built.

Execute the Program

cd host
cargo run --release -- --execute

This executes the guest program without proving it, checks its output and prints the cycle count.

Generate a Core Proof

cd host
cargo run --release -- --core

Generate a Compressed Proof

cd host
cargo run --release -- --compressed

See proof types for the difference between core and compressed proofs.

Generate an EVM-Compatible Proof

Groth16 and PLONK proofs are cheap to verify on Ethereum but take longer to generate than core or compressed proofs. The first run downloads the v2.0.0 circuit artifacts to ~/.zkm/circuits.

cd host
cargo run --release --bin evm -- --system groth16
cargo run --release --bin evm -- --system plonk

Each command verifies the proof and writes a fixture to contracts/src/fixtures/ that the Solidity tests verify.

Retrieve the Verification Key

The programVKey your on-chain contract checks proofs against:

cd host
cargo run --release --bin vkey

Using the Prover Network

Set the prover in .env (see .env.example):

ZKM_PROVER=network
ZKM_PRIVATE_KEY=
SSL_CERT_PATH=
SSL_KEY_PATH=
CA_CERT_PATH=

The network prover generates compressed and Groth16 proofs. See the network prover documentation for the endpoint and certificate settings.

Solidity Verifier

Install Foundry if you do not have it:

curl -L https://foundry.paradigm.xyz | bash

Verify the EVM-Compatible Proofs

cd contracts
forge test

The tests verify the Groth16 and PLONK fixtures against the v2.0.0 verifiers, and check that a changed proof or changed public values are rejected.

Deploy the Verifier Contract

cd contracts
forge script script/ZKMVerifierGroth16.s.sol:ZKMVerifierGroth16Script --rpc-url <RPC_URL> --private-key <PRIVATE_KEY> --broadcast

Use script/ZKMVerifierPlonk.s.sol:ZKMVerifierPlonkScript for the PLONK verifier. For more details, see the contracts guide.