ZK Upgrade Path

PrivateDAO now includes a real zero-knowledge companion stack that starts from the current protocol without changing the deployed program, PDA seeds, account layouts, or browser flows.

This layer is intentionally additive:

• the on-chain governance lifecycle remains create -> commit -> reveal -> finalize -> execute
• the zk circuit runs off-chain today
• the proof system demonstrates how vote eligibility and commitment binding can be proven without exposing private inputs directly
• future verifier integration can be added later as a protocol phase, not silently introduced into the current live system

What Exists Today

• a real Circom circuit at zk/circuits/private_dao_vote_overlay.circom
• a real Circom circuit at zk/circuits/private_dao_delegation_overlay.circom
• a real Circom circuit at zk/circuits/private_dao_tally_overlay.circom
• Groth16 setup and verification scripts
• sample witness paths that produce real proofs
• proof artifacts under zk/proofs/
• setup artifacts under zk/setup/
• a layered ZK stack note at docs/zk-stack.md

What The Proofs Assert

The current vote overlay proves all of the following at once:

• the vote is boolean
• the voter weight is at least the configured threshold
• the public commitment matches the private tuple
• vote
• salt
• voterKey
• proposalId
• daoKey
• the nullifier is bound to:
• voterKey
• proposalId
• daoKey
• the public eligibility hash is bound to:
• voterKey
• weight
• daoKey

The delegation overlay proves:

• delegated voting is active
• delegated weight meets the configured threshold
• delegation is bound to:
• delegatorKey
• delegateeKey
• proposalId
• daoKey
• salt
• proposal-scoped delegation nullifier binding

The tally overlay proves:

• two revealed vote tuples are boolean and commitment-consistent
• weighted yes and no totals are deterministic
• a nullifier accumulator binds the revealed sample to proposal-scoped replay boundaries

Why This Is Non-Breaking

The live program still uses the existing commit-reveal flow. The zk layer does not replace current instructions and does not change any runtime assumptions for existing users or scripts.

Instead, it establishes a real proof system that can later support:

• zk voter eligibility
• zk commitment binding
• zk delegation authorization
• zk tally integrity
• zk nullifier-style replay protection
• future verifier integration

Commands

npm run zk:build
npm run zk:prove:sample
npm run zk:verify:sample

Per-layer proof replay:

npm run zk:prove:vote
npm run zk:prove:delegation
npm run zk:prove:tally