Paper 2023/656 Original: eprint.iacr.org/2023/656 ↗

Formalizing Soundness Proofs of SNARKs

Bolton Bailey
Andrew Miller
Abstract

Succinct Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledge (SNARKs) have seen interest and development from the cryptographic community over recent years, and there are now constructions with very small proof size designed to work well in practice. A SNARK protocol can only be widely accepted as secure, however, if a rigorous proof of its security properties has been vetted by the community. Even then, it is sometimes the case that these security proofs are flawed, and it is then necessary for further research to identify these flaws and correct the record. To increase the rigor of these proofs, we turn to formal methods. Focusing on the soundness aspect of a widespread class of SNARKs, we formalize proofs for six different constructions, including the well-known Groth '16. Our codebase is written in the Lean 3 theorem proving language, and uses a variety of techniques to simplify and automate these proofs as much as possible.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Cryptographic protocols
Publication info
Preprint.
History
2023-05-09: last updated
2023-05-09: published
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2023/656
License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2023/656,
      author = {Bolton Bailey and Andrew Miller},
      title = {Formalizing Soundness Proofs of SNARKs},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2023/656},
      year = {2023},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/656}
}
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