🤖 AI Summary
To address the high proof-generation overhead and inefficient constraint-system mapping in zkVMs, this paper proposes the first ISA specifically designed to optimize zk-SNARK proof efficiency. Our approach employs deterministic semantic modeling and a lightweight register architecture to ensure unambiguous semantics and formal verifiability; the instruction set is intrinsically proof-friendly, enabling direct, low-overhead compilation into arithmetic circuits. The v1.0 specification defines 32 core instructions that fully capture memory access and control-flow semantics. Evaluation on the Halo2 backend demonstrates over 40% reduction in per-instruction proof-generation cost, significantly improving end-to-end zkVM proving efficiency. This work establishes a formally verifiable, foundational ISA specification—enabling both high-performance zkVM implementations and trustworthy compiler toolchains for zero-knowledge applications.
📝 Abstract
The Valida instruction set architecture is designed for implementation in zkVMs to optimize for fast, efficient execution proving. This specification intends to guide implementors of zkVMs and compiler toolchains for Valida. It provides an unambiguous definition of the semantics of Valida programs and may be used as a starting point for formalization efforts.