1<h1 align="center">ZEXE (Zero knowledge EXEcution)</h1>
  2
  3<p align="center">
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 10
 11
 12___ZEXE___ (pronounced */zeksē/*) is a Rust library for decentralized private computation.
 13
 14
 15This library was initially developed as part of the paper *"[ZEXE: Enabling Decentralized Private Computation][zexe]"*, and it is released under the MIT License and the Apache v2 License (see [License](#license)).
 16
 17**WARNING:** This is an academic proof-of-concept prototype, and in particular has not received careful code review. This implementation is NOT ready for production use.
 18
 19## Overview
 20
 21This library implements a ledger-based system that enables users to execute offline computations and subsequently produce publicly-verifiable transactions that attest to the correctness of these offline executions. The transactions contain *zero-knowledge succinct arguments* (zkSNARKs) attesting to the correctness of the offline computations, and provide strong notions of privacy and succinctness.
 22
 23- **Privacy** - transactions reveal no information about the offline computation.
 24- **Succinctness** - transactions can be validated in time that is independent of the offline computation.
 25- **Application isolation** - malicious applications cannot affect the execution of honest applications.
 26- **Application interaction** -  applications can safely communicate with each other.
 27
 28Informally, the library provides the ability to create transactions that run arbitrary (Turing-complete) scripts on hidden data stored on the ledger. In more detail, the library implements a cryptographic primitive known as *decentralized private computation* (DPC) schemes, which are described in detail in the [ZEXE paper][zexe].
 29
 30## Directory structure
 31
 32This repository contains several Rust crates that implement the different building blocks of ZEXE. The high-level structure of the repository is as follows.
 33
 34* [`algebra`](algebra): Rust crate that provides finite fields and elliptic curves
 35* [`crypto-primitives`](crypto-primitives): Rust crate that implements some useful cryptographic primitives (and constraints for them)
 36* [`dpc`](dpc): Rust crate that implements DPC schemes (the main cryptographic primitive in this repository)
 37* [`ff-fft`](ff-fft): Rust crate that provides efficient finite field polynomial arithmetic based on finite field FFTs
 38* [`r1cs-core`](r1cs-core): Rust crate that defines core interfaces for a Rank-1 Constraint System (R1CS)
 39* [`r1cs-std`](r1cs-std): Rust crate that provides various gadgets used to construct R1CS
 40* [`gm17`](gm17): Rust crate that implements the zkSNARK of [Groth and Maller][GM17]
 41* [`groth16`](groth16): Rust crate that implements the zkSNARK of [Groth][Groth16]
 42
 43
 44In addition, there is a  [`bench-utils`](bench-utils) crate which contains infrastructure for benchmarking. This crate includes macros for timing code segments and is used for profiling the building blocks of ZEXE.
 45
 46[GM17]: https://ia.cr/2017/540
 47[Groth16]: https://ia.cr/2016/260
 48
 49
 50## Build guide
 51
 52The library compiles on the `stable` toolchain of the Rust compiler. To install the latest version of Rust, first install `rustup` by following the instructions [here](https://rustup.rs/), or via your platform's package manager. Once `rustup` is installed, install the Rust toolchain by invoking:
 53```bash
 54rustup install stable
 55```
 56
 57After that, use `cargo`, the standard Rust build tool, to build the library:
 58```bash
 59git clone https://github.com/scipr-lab/zexe.git
 60cd zexe/dpc
 61cargo build --release
 62```
 63
 64This library comes with unit tests for each of the provided crates. Run the tests with:
 65```bash
 66cargo test
 67``` 
 68
 69Lastly, this library comes with benchmarks for the following crates:
 70
 71- [`algebra`](algebra)
 72- [`dpc`](dpc)
 73
 74These benchmarks require the nightly Rust toolchain; to install this, run `rustup install nightly`. Then, to run benchmarks, run the following command:
 75```bash
 76cargo +nightly bench
 77```
 78
 79## License
 80
 81ZEXE is licensed under either of the following licenses, at your discretion.
 82
 83 * Apache License Version 2.0 ([LICENSE-APACHE](LICENSE-APACHE) or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
 84 * MIT license ([LICENSE-MIT](LICENSE-MIT) or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)
 85
 86Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution submitted for inclusion in ZEXE by you shall be dual licensed as above (as defined in the Apache v2 License), without any additional terms or conditions.
 87
 88[zexe]: https://ia.cr/2018/962
 89
 90## Reference paper
 91
 92[_ZEXE: Enabling Decentralized Private Computation_][zexe]    
 93[Sean Bowe](https://www.github.com/ebfull), Alessandro Chiesa, Matthew Green, Ian Miers, [Pratyush Mishra](https://www.github.com/pratyush), [Howard Wu](https://www.github.com/howardwu)    
 94*IEEE S&P 2020* (*IACR ePrint Report 2018/962*)
 95
 96## Acknowledgements
 97
 98This work was supported by:
 99a Google Faculty Award;
100the National Science Foundation;
101the UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity;
102and donations from the Ethereum Foundation, the Interchain Foundation, and Qtum.
103
104Some parts of the finite field arithmetic, elliptic curve arithmetic, FFTs, and multi-threading infrastructure in the `algebra` crate have been adapted from code in the [`ff`](https://github.com/zkcrypto/ff), [`pairing`](https://github.com/zkcrypto/pairing), and [`bellman`](https://github.com/zkcrypto/bellman) crates, developed by [Sean Bowe](https://www.github.com/ebfull) and others from Zcash.