ZisK Prover Specification

ZisK Prover Specification#

This is the complete specification for the PIL2 proving system as used by the ZisK zkVM. It specifies exactly what the prover and verifier compute, in sequence, using mathematical notation. It contains no proofs and no security analysis—only the concrete protocol.

The specification comprises three parts:

  1. STARK Protocol — the parametric FRI-STARK proving system that works with any AIR over the Goldilocks field.

  2. ZisK Machine — the concrete chip architecture: 21 AIRs, bus interconnections, memory layout, coprocessors, precompile circuits, lookup tables, and global constraints.

  3. Recursion Pipeline — the VADCOP recursive aggregation from per-AIR STARKs to a single proof.

This specification is accompanied by a Python executable specification that implements the complete STARK prover and verifier, producing byte-identical proofs to the production C++ implementation.