The eSTARK Brief Introduction

The Hermez zkEVM teams open-sourced its paper eSTARK[1], a polynomial IOP model that generalizes the STARK family through the introduction of a more generic intermediate representation called eAIR.

The core techniques applied to optimize arithmetization and polynomial computations are listed below.

1. FRI as PCS and Batch FRI via Linear hash
2. universal arithmetization: eAIR for connection, inclusion(pLookup), and selected vector arguments.
3. Trace Consistency Check
4. Cooley–Tukey FFT
5. Controlling the Constraint Degree with Intermediate Polynomials; Parallel polynomial evaluation via OpenMP(c/cpp)/Rayon(rust)

Some implementations currently we are involved in.

• Nodejs: https://github.com/0xPolygonHermez/pil-stark/
• Rust: https://github.com/0xEigenLabs/eigen-zkvm/tree/main/starky

In the next few posts, we’ll dive into this protocol, and share more specific examples to introduce eSTARK and its Rust implementation.

Furthermore, we’ll introduce some new opts in eigen-zkvm on Hash Function and arithmetization.

Reference

[1] https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/474.pdf