Installation

Ziren is available for Linux and macOS.

Requirements

• Git
• Rust via rustup. The Ziren repository pins its nightly toolchain in rust-toolchain.toml, which rustup installs on first use.
• Go 1.23 or later, only for generating Groth16 or PLONK proofs (the SNARK backend is built through a Go FFI).

Get Started

Option 1: Quick Install

The zkmup installer installs the Ziren guest toolchain, which compiles programs for the mipsel-zkm-zkvm-elf target. Run:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ProjectZKM/toolchain/refs/heads/main/setup.sh | sh

The script downloads zkmup to ~/.zkm-toolchain/bin, installs the latest toolchain release (zkmup install) and writes ~/.zkm-toolchain/env (zkmup setup). Load the environment in each shell that builds guest programs:

. ~/.zkm-toolchain/env

List the available toolchain releases, and install or select a specific one:

~/.zkm-toolchain/bin/zkmup list-available
~/.zkm-toolchain/bin/zkmup install -v 20260917
~/.zkm-toolchain/bin/zkmup setup -v 20260917

Use release 20260917 or later. It fixes an LLVM MIPS backend bug, present in earlier releases, in which the delay-slot filler could move a store across a call and miscompile some guest programs.

Guest programs are built by running cargo from PATH, which after loading ~/.zkm-toolchain/env is the Ziren toolchain's cargo; the environment file also sets ZIREN_ZKM_CC for C dependencies. If cargo is instead a rustup proxy, the build selects the rustup toolchain named by ZKM_GUEST_TOOLCHAIN (default zkm).

You can now run the Ziren examples or unit tests:

git clone https://github.com/ProjectZKM/Ziren
cd Ziren && cargo test -r

Troubleshooting

The following error may occur:

cargo build --release
cargo: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.32' not found (required by cargo)
cargo: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.33' not found (required by cargo)
cargo: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.34' not found (required by cargo)

The prebuilt toolchain binaries are built for Ubuntu 22.04 and macOS. On systems with an older GLIBC, build the toolchain from source.

Option 2: Building from Source

See the toolchain repository.

Choosing a Prover

The SDK's ProverClient::new() selects its prover from the ZKM_PROVER environment variable:

Groth16 and PLONK circuit artifacts are downloaded on first use into ~/.zkm/circuits/{groth16,plonk}/<version>, where <version> is the SDK's circuit version (v2.0.0 for Ziren 2.0.0).