Introducing ZKForge: A Pure Rust ZK Compiler with Fiat-Shamir PLONK

[zkarchitect]

What is this?

ZKForge is a ZK proof compiler written entirely in Rust — no Node.js, no npm, no WASM. One binary that goes from .zkf → R1CS → Groth16/PLONK → Solidity verifier → Foundry deploy.

What's unique?

1. Fiat-Shamir PLONK from scratch
We implemented the full Fiat-Shamir transform using a Poseidon-based transcript. No hardcoded challenges. Both prover and verifier absorb wire commitments before deriving beta, gamma, zeta, v in the correct order.

2. Three critical bugs found and fixed during internal review
We published the full post-mortem in TECHNICAL_PAPER.md §4.2. Comparison constraints were forgeable (returned -1 as default). PLONK wires were domain elements, not real witness values. Inequality constraints were inverted. All fixed, all tested.

3. Built-in ZKML
Neural network inference (ReLU, softmax, field-aware arithmetic) runs as a proof — not a separate pipeline. circom and Noir don't have this.

4. 'English to ZK Proof'
zkforge translate 'prove age > 18' → automatically generates .zkf + witness. English and Arabic supported. More languages wanted (Issue #13).

5. Honest about limitations
No 'trust me bro' claims. Our SECURITY.md lists exactly what's unverified. Benchmarks are standalone until we can build circom 2.x for a fair comparison.

What we need help with

• Code coverage (Issue Add code coverage reporting to CI #12 — good first issue)
• Formal Fiat-Shamir proof (Issue Formal verification of PLONK Fiat-Shamir transcript #9 — research-level)
• Full ECDSA in circuit (Issue Full secp256k1 ECDSA verification inside R1CS circuit #11 — hard, secp256k1 over BN254 field)
• Cross-tool benchmark (Issue Reproducible cross-tool benchmark: ZKForge vs circom 2.x #10 — we need a Linux env to build circom 2.x)

Why I'm building this

I believe ZK tooling should be as simple as cargo install and zkforge prove. The current ecosystem requires JavaScript, npm, and multi-tool pipelines — that friction keeps developers away from ZK.

Links

• Repo: https://github.com/zkarchitect/zkforge
• Technical Paper: https://github.com/zkarchitect/zkforge/blob/main/TECHNICAL_PAPER.md
• Latest Release (v1.1.0): https://github.com/zkarchitect/zkforge/releases/tag/v1.1.0