SIEVE Circuit IR Version 2.1.0 Release

Galois is excited to announce that the latest SIEVE Circuit IR (Intermediate Representation) specification has been released! The SIEVE Circuit IR is a standardized format for encoding zero-knowledge proof statements as arithmetic or boolean circuits. Galois and collaborators at Stealth Software, QED-IT, Cybernetica, Georgia Tech, Georgetown University, Northwestern University, SRI, and Boston University have developed the standard over the course of the DARPA SIEVE program. 

A key benefit of the Circuit IR is that it enables interoperability between zero-knowledge frontends and backends. Frontends produce zero-knowledge statements for various applications like proving the correctness of proprietary software or proving policy compliance while protecting private user data. Backends consume the zero-knowledge statements that frontends produce and execute the cryptographic algorithms to actually prove the statements in zero-knowledge. The IR allows any frontend to utilize any compatible backend, enabling applications to easily swap backends based on their deployment requirements. 

The world of zero-knowledge is moving quickly, so the IR needs a way to support the latest features and protocols. With that in mind, this version of the SIEVE Circuit IR adds support for plugin extensions. Plugin extensions enable users to extend the IR so that they can experiment with new functionality. Many plugins that are more stable have also been standardized, including plugins for RAM operations, permutation checks, iterators, vector operations, and extended arithmetic operations. 

Research engineers James Parker (Galois) and Kimberlee Model (Stealth Software) recently presented the latest version of the SIEVE Circuit IR at ZKProof 5.5. The slides from that presentation are available here.

Learn more about the SIEVE Program HERE.

Version 2.1.0 of the SIEVE Circuit IR is publicly available on Github.