zsldemo

README

ZSLBox DApp demonstrator

Note for ConsenSys Academy reviewers: this project was started as part of my dayjob @ConsenSys and doesn't meet certain requirements (using Truffle, Metamask or EthPM). It is still work in progress but usable. I hope you enjoy exploring it!

What is it

This repo will get you started running ZSLBox alongside an ethereum node and a DApp demonstrating ZCash-like transactions.

What are ZCash transactions

The ZCash protocol specification is a must read.

TLDR; ZCash enables private (aka shielded) transactions. It uses Zero Knowledge Proofs (computed off-chain in a wallet, verified on-chain) to guarantee privacy and mass-conservation of notes.

A note is a tuple (pk, value, rho) where:

• pk is the "paying" key derived from a "spending" key sk. sk is kept private and is needed to spend a note
• rho is randomness used to ensure uniqueness of nullifiers
• value is the value of the note

ZCash protocol defines 3 operations which produces proofs:

1. shielding: note --> (proof, commitment) - printing money
2. unshielding: (note, sk, merkeProof) --> (proof, nullifier) - burning money
3. shieldedTransfer: (shieldedInputs[note, sk, merkleProof], outputs[note]) --> (proof, nullifiers, commitments) - burns 2 notes & creates 2 notes - with Sum(inputValues) == Sum(outputValues).

For these 3 operations, the principle is the same; one computes the proof offline in a wallet, and submit it on-chain alongside a claim that can be valided by verifying the proof itself.

To complete a shielding operation, one would

1. create (or use) a key pair (pk,sk)
2. create a note (pk, rho, value) (i.e. print money)
3. compute a proof and a commitment through the shielding operation
4. submit the proof, the commitment and the value on-chain for verification. For the shielding operation, the proof verification will only guarantee that the submitter owns a note of value v and that it's commitment was computed correctly. It is the responsibility of the blockchain itself (for Ethereum, the smart contract) to authorize or not the submitter to "print money"

The ZCash protocol is elegant and I invite you to read the specs to know more, it is time well spent.

The whole privacy point is the shieldedTransfer operation. Commitments and nullifiers can't be associated. Transactions are unlinkable and untraceable. The transaction graph is confidential, and linking identities to notes is not possible.

Previous work

This work and the ZSLBox is based on Quorum ZSL published in Oct. 2017 by the the ZCash team & JPM.

Getting Started

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes.

Prerequisites

You'll need to install docker and docker-compose. Computing zkSNARKs is memory intensive, so you'll also need to give more RAM (default is 2Gb) to the docker daemon.

Running

go get -u github.com/gbotrel/zsldemo
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/gbotrel/zsldemo
docker-compose build && docker-compose up

You can now access the DApp at localhost:8001. ZSLBox will cache large files (proving keys) at startup, so the first operations might be slower.

Current state on MBP 2016:

• shielding - success 100%, average time 3s
• unshielding - success 100%, average time 17s
• shielded transfer - success 80%, average time 40s

Running the tests

The smart contract tests are written in Go. They run against a simulated blockchain (github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/accounts/abi/bind/backends/SimulatedBackend) which is conveniently using our ZSL enabled geth fork (vendored in /vendor through dep).

Requirement

The tests will hit ZSLBox, both for computing the proof and for verifying it through the smart contract. The easiest way to run it is have the same command above (docker-compose up) running at the root of the repo. One of the services launched is ZSLBox.

cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/gbotrel/zsldemo/frontend/contracts/native
go test

Building

Architecture

####WIP TO BE COMPLETED

3 services, ZSLBox, a geth running in dev mode and zsldemo. zsldemo serves static files (DApp) that connect to ZSLBox through grpc-web and to geth through gopherjs-eth a GopherJS wrapper for web3.js.

Note: the whole project is coded in Go. It is a GopherJS experiment, and while few things are frustrating (for example, the 1.5 mb size of the minified JS output), it works surpinsingly well. Go 1.11 is introducing WASM, and I believe in the coming months, we could see a credible dev/prod workflow to develop DApp in Go, whether because it is a native DApp, or because like me, you're allergic to Javascript (gulp, bower,npm,yarn,browserify,webpack,clojure,...) and happy with the excellent standard lib and toolchain from go (go vet, go build, go test, go generate, go doc, dep)