BTQ Research announced that the Keelung Compiler is now open sourced.
Keelung is a programming language specifically designed for creating fast, private and secure zero-knowledge programs, enabling developers to easily generate reliable proofs without cryptographic expertise.
Keelung harnesses the strength of the Haskell ecosystem by embedding itself within the language. This integration empowers Keelung developers to leverage Haskell’s extensive collection of libraries, tools, and resources.
Keelung Compiler
The compiler takes Keelung programs as inputs and transforms them into constraint systems for proof generation and verification. The compiler is equipped with an interpreter, enabling developers to execute their Keelung programs during development, along with a solver that generates witnesses in constraint systems. During the compilation process, each Keelung program undergoes multiple passes of rewriting and optimization before being translated into a constraint system for proof generation and verification, as shown in the diagram below.
Open sourcing the Keelung toolchain
According to a blog post: “Although the Keelung language itself has been open sourced, the compiler had not. We acknowledge that in the world of ZKPs, verifiability is the prerequisite for trust. That’s why we are open sourcing the compiler as well. By open sourcing the compiler under the Apache 2.0 license, we are also releasing our rewrite and optimization techniques performed in the compiler. We hope this will enhance the transparency and accessibility of Keelung for developers, thereby fostering a more creative and engaging community. We eagerly welcome contributions to both the language and compiler in order to push the ball forward within the ZKP ecosystem.
Harnessing the power of ZKPs”
ZKPs serve as indispensable technology in today’s data-centric world, strengthening privacy and security across a range of applications. From facilitating privacy-oriented analytics – which allows businesses to showcase performance benchmarks without disclosing sensitive data – to offering secure identity verification on digital platforms without revealing unnecessary personal information, ZKPs are proving transformative.
They have been instrumental in maintaining the integrity of complex global supply chains and have been a cornerstone in creating reliable, transparent, and anonymous voting systems, thereby increasing confidence in electoral procedures. ZKPs are also making leaps in machine learning and gaming. They facilitate localized machine learning without the need to share sensitive data with untrusted servers, and allow players to validate achievements privately in the world of gaming.
By 100% open sourcing Keelung, BTQ anticipates an expansion of these use cases. By giving developers the keys to this powerful technology, the team is eager to see new ways in which they can leverage it to reinforce data privacy and security, and ultimately, drive innovation in digital interactions.
In the next update, the company reports it will be introducing automatic datatype encoding in Keelung. This feature aims to enhance the integration between Keelung and Haskell by automatically translating Haskell datatypes into Keelung primitives. With this improvement, the interoperability between the two languages will become even more seamless.
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