ZEE200

This is the artifact for the paper ZEE200: Zero Knowledge for Everything and Everyone @ 200 KHz to be presented on ACM CCS 2026.

eprint link: https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/828.pdf

Overview

ZEE200 is an instruction-based zero-knowledge virtual machine built on a tight ZK CPU and VOLE-based ZK. Proof costs scale with the number of executed instructions, not the entire program size, and memory is modeled via a black-box ZK RAM (IZKRAM).

This repository contains:

• The ZEE200 backend (implemented in this repo).
• A ZEE baseline implementation (zee-processor).
• An LLVM/Newlib frontend toolchain (via Docker) for compiling C → ZEE assembly → ZK programs.
• Benchmarks and scripts to reproduce the evaluation from the paper.

Documentation

The original paper describes the design and evaluation. Example workloads and scripts live under benchmarks/ and scripts/.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• CMake (>=3.10), a C++17 compiler, and make.
• Docker (for the LLVM/Newlib toolchain; the zkVM itself does not require Docker).

Install dependencies (recommended on Linux)

On a fresh Ubuntu-like system, run:

./setup.sh

This installs the EMP toolkit and other libraries used by the ZEE baseline and by some development tooling. It requires sudo for the final apt step.

Build the ZEE200 backend

From the repo root:

mkdir -p build
cd build
cmake ..
make -j

This builds test_zkvm_generic_asm_test under build/bin/.

Build the ZEE baseline (optional)

To build the ZEE reference prover/verifier (ZKMachine) used by the ZEE scripts:

cd zee-processor
cmake .
make -j

This produces a zee-processor/ZKMachine binary, which is what the scripts/zee/run_*.sh helpers expect.

Network emulation (optional)

Some experiments in the paper assume a bounded bandwidth and non-zero latency between prover and verifier. The helper script set_net.sh configures this using Linux tc on a single machine.

• Script location: set_net.sh (repo root)
• Usage:
  • IF=<iface> ./set_net.sh <rate_mbit:100|500|1000> <one_way_delay_ms>
  • By default IF=lo (loopback).
  • The delay is one-way; RTT is roughly 2 × one_way_delay_ms.
• Example: approximate 1 Gbit/s bandwidth and 2 ms RTT on loopback:
  • ./set_net.sh 1000 1
• To clear the shaping rules:
  • sudo tc qdisc del dev $IF root (replace $IF with your interface, e.g., lo)

Frontend toolchain: C → ZEE .s → .zk (Docker)

The frontend lives under toolchain/ and is intended to run inside a Docker image (zee-toolchain:20.04) so it uses a consistent LLVM 10 / newlib environment. On first use, the Docker scripts will build the zee-toolchain:20.04 image if it is missing; this can take a while, but subsequent runs reuse the image and are much faster.

From the repo root:

# 1) Compile C to ZEE assembly (.s) via Docker
#    This will build the zee-toolchain:20.04 image automatically if missing.
./toolchain/compile_c_docker.sh \
  benchmarks/fib_stdin/fib_stdin.c \
  benchmarks/fib_stdin/fib_stdin.s

# 2) Convert ZEE .s to a ZK program (.zk) for zee-processor
./toolchain/s_to_zk_docker.sh \
  benchmarks/fib_stdin/fib_stdin.s \
  benchmarks/fib_stdin/fib_stdin.zk

You can reuse these commands for other C benchmarks under benchmarks/ by adjusting the input and output paths. The first build of the zee-toolchain:20.04 image can consume a significant amount of disk space (on the order of ~16 GB for the image and build artefacts), so make sure you have enough free space.

If Docker requires sudo on your system:

• The simplest option is to prefix the commands with sudo.

• On Linux with Docker Engine, you can instead allow your user to run Docker without sudo:

  # Create the docker group if it does not exist
  getent group docker >/dev/null || sudo groupadd docker
  
  # Add the current user to the docker group
  sudo usermod -aG docker "$USER"
  
  # Apply the new group membership (or log out and log back in)
  newgrp docker

  Membership in the docker group effectively grants root-equivalent privileges on the host.

• On macOS (Docker Desktop), usermod/newgrp and the docker Unix group are not used; just install and run Docker Desktop and ensure docker is on your PATH.

Benchmark Scripts

The scripts/ directory contains small, explicit scripts for each benchmark and backend. All of them are meant to be run from the repo root.

Each benchmark has:

• A top-level run_*_prover.sh and run_*_verifier.sh that select the backend (zee200 or zee) and print any relevant input instructions.
• Backend-specific implementations under:
  • scripts/zkvm/ for the ZEE200 backend.
  • scripts/zee/ for the ZEE baseline.

Examples:

sed (bug trigger)

# ZEE200 backend
./scripts/run_sed_prover.sh zee200
./scripts/run_sed_verifier.sh zee200

# ZEE baseline
./scripts/run_sed_prover.sh zee
./scripts/run_sed_verifier.sh zee

Fibonacci (fib_stdin)

These use the benchmarks/fib_stdin/ program, which reads from stdin.

# Prover (ZEE200)
./scripts/run_fib_prover.sh zee200
# Input pattern in prover terminal:
#   1) Dummy integer (e.g., 12345)
#   2) Fibonacci index n (e.g., 20 or 23)

# Verifier (ZEE200)
./scripts/run_fib_verifier.sh zee200

Swap zee200 → zee to run the ZEE baseline instead.

SHA-256

# Prover (ZEE200)
./scripts/run_sha_prover.sh zee200
# Input pattern in prover terminal:
#   1) Dummy integer (e.g., 12345)
#   2) Iteration count (e.g., 10 or 200)

# Verifier
./scripts/run_sha_verifier.sh zee200

mergesort / gzip / RAM sweeps

Other benchmarks follow the same naming pattern:

• Mergesort:

  • ./scripts/run_mergesort500_prover.sh <zee200|zee>
  • ./scripts/run_mergesort500_verifier.sh <zee200|zee>
  • ./scripts/run_mergesort5000_prover.sh <zee200|zee>
  • ./scripts/run_mergesort5000_verifier.sh <zee200|zee>

• gzip (bug trigger and decompression):

  • ./scripts/run_gzip_bug_prover.sh <zee200|zee>
  • ./scripts/run_gzip_bug_verifier.sh <zee200|zee>
  • ./scripts/run_gzip_decompress_prover.sh <zee200|zee>
  • ./scripts/run_gzip_decompress_verifier.sh <zee200|zee>

• Empty-program RAM sweeps (Table on ZK RAM usage):

  • ZEE200: ./scripts/run_empty_ram_sweep_zee200.sh
  • ZEE: ./scripts/run_empty_ram_sweep_zee.sh

These scripts set up temporary working directories, copy only the necessary binaries and inputs, and log results under benchmarks/*/ so the raw data is easy to inspect.

Project Structure

At a high level:

ZEE200/
├── benchmarks/             # C sources, ZEE .s/.zk, inputs, and eval helpers
│   ├── empty/              # Empty program + RAM sweep logs
│   ├── fib_stdin/          # Recursive Fibonacci benchmark
│   ├── gzip/               # gzip bug + decompression benchmarks
│   ├── mergesort/          # mergesort benchmarks (n=500, 5000)
│   ├── sed/                # sed vulnerability benchmark
│   └── sha256/             # SHA-256 benchmark
├── emp-zk/                 # EMP toolkit ZK library
├── scripts/                # Top-level and backend-specific runners
│   ├── run_*_prover.sh     # One script per benchmark (backend selector)
│   ├── run_*_verifier.sh   # Matching verifier scripts
│   ├── zkvm/               # ZEE200-specific runners
│   └── zee/                # ZEE baseline-specific runners
├── toolchain/              # Frontend toolchain (LLVM, newlib, Docker scripts)
│   ├── zk-llvm-backend/    # ZEE LLVM backend + newlib sources
│   ├── zknewlib/           # Newlib build directory for zk target
│   ├── zee-cleartext/      # Cleartext ISA→ZK ISA tools (isaconverter, zkassembler)
│   ├── compile_c.sh        # C → ZEE .s (host)
│   ├── compile_c_docker.sh # C → ZEE .s (Docker; preferred)
│   └── s_to_zk_docker.sh   # ZEE .s → .zk (Docker)
├── zk-ram/                 # IZKRAM / ZKSet implementations
├── zkvm/                   # Core ZEE200 backend implementation
│   ├── generic_asm_test.cpp  # Main driver (test_zkvm_generic_asm_test)
│   ├── common_test_base.h    # ZK protocol harness
│   ├── instruction.h         # Circuit representation
│   ├── zkcpu.h               # VM coordinator
│   ├── gates/                # Gate(Gadget) implementations
│   ├── parsing/              # Assembly parser
│   ├── translation/          # ASM→circuit lowering
│   └── cleartext_vm/         # Cleartext reference VM
├── zee-processor/           # ZEE baseline prover/verifier (ZKMachine)
└── build/                   # Local build directory (not committed)
    └── bin/                 # Built binaries (e.g., test_zkvm_generic_asm_test)