ZK Verifier Strategy

This document defines the current verifier posture for PrivateDAO and what still needs to be closed before `zk_enforced` can become the stronger production-grade path.

Current Strategy

PrivateDAO does not yet claim a fully dominant on-chain verifier boundary.

The current model is:

• off-chain witness generation
• off-chain proof generation
• off-chain verification workflow
• on-chain proof anchors
• on-chain parallel verification receipts
• on-chain receipt upgrades into `zk_enforced` mode
• proposal-level `zk_enforced` policy once the required receipts exist

This is intentionally stronger than a pure proof-of-concept, but still not the same as a final production-grade verifier architecture.

Why This Exists

The current approach keeps the live governance product stable while allowing:

• proposal-bound proof material
• proposal-bound verification receipts
• operator-visible enforcement upgrades
• frontend and CLI support for the stronger path

without rewriting the entire commit-reveal lifecycle in one step.

What Still Needs To Be Decided

Verifier Boundary

Before promoting `zk_enforced` as the stronger default path, the project must finalize:

• whether receipt-based verification remains the production trust boundary
• or whether a stricter verifier-program model will be required

Public Inputs

The project must freeze the exact public inputs for:

• vote proof path
• delegation proof path
• tally proof path

so the enforcement contract and the reviewer expectations match.

Compute Budget

The stronger path must be costed explicitly for:

• instruction count
• account footprint
• transaction size
• compute-unit pressure
• confirmation behavior under Devnet and mainnet load

Operator Flow

The canonical operator path must remain proposal-bound:

• record proposal-bound proof anchors
• record proposal-bound verification receipts
• enable `zk_enforced`
• finalize only through the matching policy path

Current Production Rule

Until the verifier boundary is frozen and reviewed:

• `zk_enforced` is available
• `zk_enforced` is useful
• `zk_enforced` is not yet the dominant production recommendation

Decision References

For the actual freeze decision, read:

• `docs/canonical-verifier-boundary-decision.md`
• `docs/zk-external-audit-scope.md`