Key Terms

Proof

A Proof is cryptographic data that can attest to the validity of a given computation. The concrete data and size depend on the proof system and program used.

Verification

The Verification is an algorithm that takes the proof, and associated public data and verification key/program and outputs whether the proof is valid or not.

Program ID

The Program ID identifies the program a proof was generated for. For SP1 it is the hash of the verifying key; for Risc0 it is the image ID.

Proof Commitment

The Proof commitment is a hash that uniquely identifies a submitted proof. It is computed as the keccak of the proof's public inputs concatenated with the program ID.

Gateway

The Gateway receives proofs from users, validates them against the sender's quota, and stores them until they are picked up for aggregation.

Payment Service

The AggregationModePaymentService is the Ethereum contract users deposit into to fund their proof submission quota.

Payments Poller

The Payments Poller watches the payment service contract for deposits and credits the corresponding quota to the user.

Proof Aggregator

The Proof Aggregator performs recursive proof verification to create one proof that attests to the validity of all the proofs it received. This aggregated proof is what gets verified on-chain.

Aggregation Window

The Aggregation window is how long a submitted proof may wait before being aggregated and settled on Ethereum. It defaults to 24 hours.

Merkle Root and Proof Inclusion

Each aggregated proof commits to a Merkle root built from the proof commitments it contains. To show that a specific proof was verified, a user provides a Merkle proof against that root, which the AlignedProofAggregationService contract checks.

Data Availability Blob

When the aggregated proof is submitted to Ethereum, the proof commitments it covers are published in a blob. This makes them publicly available for 18 days so that users can inspect what was aggregated and build their Merkle proofs.