Nokia Bell Labs Internship Benchmarking Zero-Knowledge 

Belgium 

196277181

In recent years, there has been a surge in the development of various programming languages and frameworks (e.g., Circom, ZoKrates, RISC-Zero, Noir, Leo, Cairo, and Lurk) specifically designed for ZKPs. These programming languages and frameworks offer a range of functionalities and performance trade-offs and can be further tailored or optimized.
However, choosing the right programming language and framework for a specific task requires a systematic evaluation, considering the subtle trade-offs of each option. This process can be challenging, requiring significant expertise, labor, and computational resources. Moreover, relying on scientific publications or community consultations often falls short as many cryptographic research efforts tend to focus on specific elements of a cryptographic scheme, neglecting detailed implementations and direct performance evaluations. As a result, developers may struggle to get a comprehensive understanding of performance trade-offs, making them dependent on piecemeal insights. This could potentially compromise the efficiency and security of their chosen implementations.

Theobjective of this projectis to conduct a comprehensive examination of ZKP programming languages and to introduce a benchmarking framework tailored for them. This framework offers adaptable backends to evaluate ZKP circuits using representative test vectors, such as a SHA-256 implementation within a specific ZKP tool or library. The framework is designed to perform thorough benchmarking, capturing both the execution time and memory usage during the setup, proving, and verification stages of ZKPs. This approach ensures a holistic understanding of the performance of various ZKP tools and libraries.

flexible, to be agreed (typically 3-4 months), starting time flexible
This internship can be part of a Master’s thesis.

• You will explore and experiment with frameworks and programming languages for developing Zero-Knowledge Proofs.
• You will propose a novel benchmarking framework for estimating the computational costs of ZKP programming languages and frameworks.
• Potentially, this internship can be part of a Master thesis. It can results in a paper that can be published at a scientific venue.

• Student enrolled in a Master Computer Science/Engineering.
• Interest in exploring and understanding novel, domain-specific programming languages used in unfamiliar contexts (e.g. Circom, ZoKrates). You are expected to download and experiment with these languages.
• Interest in learning about cryptographic techniques and their novel applications.
• Experience with cryptographic techniques is a plus.
• Experience with a wide variety of programming languages is a plus.
• Language skills: English
  

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• One of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere
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