KEVM: Semantics of EVM in K

In this repository, we provide a model of the EVM in K.

Fast Installation

• bash <(curl https://kframework.org/install): install kup package manager.
• kup install kevm: install KEVM.
• kup list kevm: list available KEVM versions.
• kup update kevm: update to latest KEVM version.

NOTE: The first run will take longer to fetch all the libraries and compile sources. (30m to 1h)

Documentation/Support

These may be useful for learning KEVM and K (newest to oldest):

• K, KEVM and Foundry Integration overview
• Jello Paper, a nice presentation of this repository.
• 20 minute tour of the semantics at 2017 Devcon3.
• KEVM 1.0 technical report, especially sections 3 and 5.
• KEVM Paper at CSF'18/FLoC.

To get support for KEVM, please join our Discord Channel.

If you want to start proving with KEVM, refer to VERIFICATION.md.

Repository Structure

The following files constitute the KEVM semantics:

• network.md provides the status codes reported to an Ethereum client on execution exceptions.
• json-rpc.md is an implementation of JSON RPC in K.
• evm-types.md provides the (functional) data of EVM (256-bit words, wordstacks, etc...).
• serialization.md provides helpers for parsing and unparsing data (hex strings, recursive-length prefix, Merkle trees, etc.).
• evm.md is the main KEVM semantics, containing EVM’s configuration and transition rules.

These additional files extend the semantics to make the repository more useful:

• buf.md defines the #buf byte-buffer abstraction for use during symbolic execution.
• abi.md defines the Contract ABI Specification for use in proofs and easy contract/function specification.
• hashed-locations.md defines the #hashedLocation abstraction used to specify Solidity-generated storage layouts.
• edsl.md combines the previous three abstractions for ease-of-use.
• foundry.md adds Foundry capabilities to KEVM.

These files are used for testing the semantics itself:

• state-utils.md provides functionality for EVM initialization, setup, and querying.
• driver.md is an execution harness for KEVM, providing a simple language for describing tests/programs.

Building from source

There are two backends of K available: LLVM for concrete execution and Haskell for symbolic execution. This repository generates the build-products for each backend in .build/usr/lib/kevm.

System Dependencies

First install the following tools:

• git
• GNU Bison, Flex, and Autoconf.
• GNU libmpfr and libtool.
• Z3 version 4.12.1

Installing Z3

KEVM requires Z3 version 4.12.1, which you may need to install from a source build if your package manager supplies a different version. To do so, follow the instructions here after checking out the correct tag in the Z3 repository:

git clone https://github.com/Z3Prover/z3.git
cd z3
git checkout z3-4.12.1
python scripts/mk_make.py
cd build
make
sudo make install

On macOS, it is easiest to install Z3 from Homebrew. If you wish to install from the source, install it to an appropriate prefix (e.g. /usr/local on Intel machines).

Ubuntu

On Ubuntu >= 22.04 (for example):

sudo apt-get install --yes                                                             \
            autoconf bison clang-12 cmake curl flex gcc jq libboost-test-dev           \
            libcrypto++-dev libffi-dev libgflags-dev libjemalloc-dev libmpfr-dev       \
            libprocps-dev libsecp256k1-dev libssl-dev libtool libyaml-dev lld-12       \
            llvm-12-tools make maven netcat-openbsd openjdk-11-jdk pkg-config          \
            protobuf-compiler python3 python3-dev python3-pip rapidjson-dev time       \
            zlib1g-dev libfmt-dev

On Ubuntu < 18.04, you'll need to skip libsecp256k1-dev and instead build it from source (via our Makefile):

make libsecp256k1

Arch Linux

On ArchLinux:

sudo pacman -S                                               \
    base base-devel boost clang cmake crypto++ curl git gmp  \
    gflags jdk-openjdk jemalloc libsecp256k1 lld llvm maven  \
    mpfr protobuf python stack yaml-cpp zlib

macOS

After installing the Command Line Tools, Homebrew, and getting the blockchain plugin, run:

brew tap kframework/k
brew install java automake libtool gmp mpfr pkg-config maven libffi llvm@14 openssl protobuf python bash kframework/k/cryptopp@8.6.0 poetry solidity
make libsecp256k1

NOTE: It is recommended to use the homebrew version of flex and XCode.

If you are building on an Apple Silicon machine, ensure that your PATH is set up correctly before running make deps or make k-deps. You can do so using direnv by copying macos-envrc to .envrc, then running direnv allow.

If the build on macOS still fails, you can also try adding the following lines to the top of your Makefile under UNAME_S:

ifeq ($(UNAME_S), Darwin)
SHELL := /usr/local/bin/bash
PATH := $(pwd)/.build/usr/bin:$(PATH)
endif

Haskell Stack (all platforms)

• Haskell Stack. Note that the version of the stack tool provided by your package manager might not be recent enough. Please follow installation instructions from the Haskell Stack website linked above.

To upgrade stack (if needed):

stack upgrade
export PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH

Build Dependencies

K Framework

The Makefile and kevm will work with either a (i) globally installed K or a (ii) K submodule included in this repository. For contributing to kevm, it is highly recommended to go with (ii) because some of the build scripts might not work otherwise. Follow these instructions to get and build the K submodule:

git submodule update --init --recursive -- deps/k
make k-deps

If you don't need either the LLVM or Haskell backend, there are flags to skip them:

make k-deps SKIP_LLVM=true SKIP_HASKELL=true

On an Apple Silicon machine, an additional flag to make is required to correctly build the Haskell backend:

make k-deps APPLE_SILICON=true

Blockchain Plugin

You also need to get the blockchain plugin submodule and install it.

git submodule update --init --recursive -- deps/plugin
make plugin-deps

Building

You need to set up a virtual environment using Poetry with the prerequisites python 3.8.*, pip >= 20.0.2, poetry >= 1.3.2:

make poetry

Finally, you can build the semantics.

make build

You can build specific targets using build-llvm, build-Haskell, or build-foundry. For more information, refer to the Makefile.

Running Tests

To execute tests from the Ethereum Test Set, the submodule needs to be fetched first.

git submodule update --init --recursive  -- tests/ethereum-tests

The tests are run using the supplied Makefile. Run make build-prove to generate tests from the markdown files.

The following subsume all other tests:

• make test: All of the quick tests.
• make test-all: All of the quick and slow tests.

These are the individual test-suites (all of these can be suffixed with -all to also run slow tests):

• make test-vm: VMTests from the Ethereum Test Set.
• make test-bchain: Subset of BlockchainTests from the Ethereum Test Set.
• make test-proof: Proofs from the Verified Smart Contracts.
• make test-interactive: Tests of the kevm command.

When running tests with the Makefile, you can specify the TEST_CONCRETE_BACKEND (for concrete tests), or TEST_SYMBOLIC_BACKEND (for proofs).

For Developers

If built from the source, the kevm executable will be in the .build/usr/bin directory. To make sure you are using the correct kevm, add this directory to your PATH:

export PATH=$(pwd)/.build/usr/bin:$PATH

Alternatively, if you work on multiple checkouts of evm-semantics or other semantics, you could add the relative path .build/usr/bin to your PATH. Do note, however, that this is a security concern.

You can call kevm help to get a quick summary of how to use the script.

Run the file tests/ethereum-tests/LegacyTests/Constantinople/VMTests/vmArithmeticTest/add0.json:

kevm run tests/ethereum-tests/LegacyTests/Constantinople/VMTests/vmArithmeticTest/add0.json --schedule DEFAULT --mode VMTESTS

To enable the debug symbols for the llvm backend, build using this command:

make build-llvm KEVM_OPTS=--enable-llvm-debug

To debug a conformance test, add the --debugger flag to the command:

kevm interpret tests/ethereum-tests/BlockchainTests/GeneralStateTests/stExample/add11.json --backend llvm --mode NORMAL --schedule MERGE --chainid 1 --debugger

Keeping in mind while developing

Always have your build up-to-date.

• If using the kup package manager, run kup install kevm --version . to install the local version.
• If building from source:
  • make poetry needs to be re-run if you touch any of the kevm-pyk code.
  • make build needs to be re-run if you touch any of this repos files.
  • make deps needs to be re-run if there is an update of the K submodule (you did git submodule update --init --recursive -- deps/k and it actually did something).
  • If both deps and build need to be re-run, you need to do deps first.
  • make clean is a safe way to remove the .build directory, but then you need to re-run make deps (should be quick this time) and make build.

Building with Nix

We now support building KEVM using nix flakes. To set up nix flakes you will need to be on nix 2.4 or higher and follow the instructions here.

For example, if you are on a standard Linux distribution, such as Ubuntu, first install nix and then enable flakes by editing either ~/.config/nix/nix.conf or /etc/nix/nix.conf and adding:

experimental-features = nix-command flakes

This is needed to expose the Nix 2.0 CLI and flakes support that are hidden behind feature-flags.

By default, Nix will build the project and its transitive dependencies from source, which can take up to an hour. We recommend setting up the binary cache to speed up the build process significantly.

To build KEVM, run:

nix build .#kevm

This will build all of KEVM and K and put a link to the resulting binaries in the result/ folder.

NOTE: Mac users, especially those running M1/M2 Macs may find nix segfaulting on occasion. If this happens, try running the nix command like this: GC_DONT_GC=1 nix build .

If you want to temporarily add the kevm binary to the current shell, run

nix shell .#kevm

Profiling with Nix

Nix can also be used to quickly profile different versions of the Haskell backend. Simply run:

nix build github:runtimeverification/evm-semantics#profile \
  --override-input k-framework/haskell-backend github:runtimeverification/haskell-backend/<HASH> \
  -o prof-<HASH>

replacing <HASH> with the commit you want to run profiling against.

If you want to profile against a working version of the Haskell backend repository, simply cd into the root of the repo and run:

nix build github:runtimeverification/evm-semantics#profile \
  --override-input k-framework/haskell-backend $(pwd) \
  -o prof-my-feature

To compare profiles, you can use:

nix run github:runtimeverification/evm-semantics#compare-profiles -- prof-my-feature prof-<HASH>

This will produce a nice table with the times for both versions of the haskell-backend. Note that #profile pre-pends the output of kore-exec --version to the profile run, which is then used as a tag by the #compare-profiles script. Therefore, any profiled local checkout of the haskell-backend will report as dirty-ghc8107 in the resulting table.

Media

This repository can build two pieces of documentation for you, the Jello Paper and the 2017 Devcon3 presentation.

System Dependencies

For the presentations in the media directory, you'll need pdflatex, commonly provided with texlive-full, and pandoc.

sudo apt install texlive-full pandoc

Building

To build all the PDFs (presentations and reports) available in the media/ directory, use:

make media

Resources

• EVM Yellowpaper: Original specification of EVM.
• LEM Semantics of EVM
• EVM Opcode Interactive Reference
• Solidity ABI Encoding

For more information about The K Framework, refer to these sources:

• The K Tutorial
• Semantics-Based Program Verifiers for All Languages
• Reachability Logic Resources
• Matching Logic Resources
• Logical Frameworks: Discussion of logical frameworks.