We're excited to share a new kind of computing platform with the world – one that can't lie about anything it does. RISC Zero enables any developer to build zero-knowledge proofs that can be executed and verified on any modern computer in the languages they are most familiar with.
RISC Zero is the first fully free-and-open-source general-purpose ZK computing platform. Our prover and verifier are available under the Apache2 license, along with several simple but powerful examples of this technology written in Rust and C++.
General Purpose Verifiable Computing
RISC Zero is a fully-compliant software implementation of the RISC-V microarchitecture (RV32IM). The RISC-V ISA is implemented as a set of polynomial constraints inside a zk-STARK based proving system.
So RISC Zero is what, exactly?
RISC Zero is zero-knowledge virtual machine that can run on any platform. It's a virtual microcontroller / co-processor that produces receipts for every program it runs, kind of like a secure virtual Adruino. These receipts can be verified at anytime by anyone in milliseconds – even if you don't trust the party that executed the code.
How is it different from other ZK projects?
Our initial release of RISC Zero is different in a few critical ways:
Both the prover and verifier are fully open. This means programs can be proven locally, preserving privacy and information hiding.
The verifier has implementations in C++ and Rust. As such is can easily run on many different platforms and on many different blockchains.
Because our ZKVM supports a standard ISA and looks like a normal von-Neumann machine, it is both familiar to a broad set of developers and can be programmed using standard languages.
What's Next?
We are working on several exciting projects internally that will be announced, explained, and released over the coming months. Please join our Discord or follow us on Twitter.
