Hardhat Noir Template Repository (with Foundry Support)

A hardhat template repository for developing noir (zk) circuits.

Getting started

Click the Use this template button at the top of this repository to create a new repository from this template.

Installation

You'll need:

• Noir (nargo CLI - Installation steps can be found here).
• Node Package Manager (npm, yarn, pnpm, etc. - whatever suits - so long as you can run hardhat on your CLI).
• Optional Foundry (Forge CLI) - Installation steps can be found here

Once you've cloned the repo, run:

# using yarn - or use npm or pnpm
yarn install

to install all necessary packages.

What's Inside

I made this repository as I was having trouble getting a hardhat project to work with noir - so I thought I'd make a template repository to help others get started. The connectivity circuit example within this template is an example of how to write a very basic circuit, compile and test it using BarretenbergWasm from within hardhat, and have the ability to turn it into a contract that can be tested as part of a hardhat project.

Tips and Tricks

Most of this repository contains boilerplate code that can be removed (contents of circuits/, deploy/, contracts/ and test/ primarily).

Creating and Returning a Testing API for a Circuit

If you want to create a new circuit (zk program), from the circuits/ directory, run:

nargo new <circuit_name>

where <circuit_name> is the name of your circuit.

So, say we run nargo new myCircuit, we should now have the following files at circuits/myCircuit/:

.
├── src
│   └── main.nr   # the main circuit file
└── Nargo.toml    # the .toml specification for that noir circuit

You can then write your circuit in src/main.nr - and once you're done, you can compile it using:

nargo check

This will add 2 new files, Prover.toml and Verifier.toml to your circuits/myCircuit/ directory, like so:

.
├── src
│   └── main.nr      # the main circuit file
├── Nargo.toml       # the .toml specification for that noir circuit
├── Prover.toml      # where the inputs to generate a proof for your circuit go
└── Verifier.toml    # where the output of a proof goes to be used in a verification

As the default Prover.toml and Verifier.toml files are empty, you'll need to add some example inputs to get them working. The default main.nr circuit generated by nargo new just accepts 2 inputs, x and y, and ensures that x != y. If this condition is met - it outputs a verification proof, and if it's not met - nargo will throw an error. You can try this by setting the contents of Prover.toml like so:

x = "1"
y = "2"

and then to generate a proof - run:

nargo prove p

This will generate a proof target directory for your circuit, as well as output a proof to Verifier.toml - which you can then use to verify your proof using:

nargo verify p

If all goes well, the CLI won't output anything. If it output something - something has gone wrong.

This is a very simple example of a proof - but this should be enough to demonstrate the general proof/verification process. To read more on noir's commands - check out the nargo CLI docs.

Working in Hardhat

Once you've got this circuit created - you can use this templates returnCircuitTestingAPI() util to get a testing API for your circuit in hardhat, like so:

const { barretenberg, pedersen, boardCircuit, acir, prover, verifier } =
  await returnCircuitTestingAPI("myCircuit");

And you're ready to test this circuit in hardhat. See the test/connectivity.test.ts file for an example of how to use both this function and these variables in hardhat, evaluating the simple circuits/connectivity/src/main.nr circuit included in this template.

Turning your Circuit into a Contract

It's more efficient to evaluate your proofs firstly using wasm/ts tests first - but once you've done that it's time to turn your circuit into a contract.

You can use this repo's create-circuit-contract hardhat task to this for you, and rename it to a more specific contract name (e.g. myCircuitVerifier.sol) to allow for nicer deployment scripts. To use this task with our above example (our myCircuit circuit), you'd run:

npx hardhat create-circuit-contract --circuit myCircuit

This will generate your Circuit contract file for you using nargo - but move it into your contracts/ directory and rename it to be your circuit name + Verifier.sol (e.g. MyCircuitVerifier.sol), as well as rename the actual contract from TurboVerifier (nargo default) to MyCircuitVerifier.

Alternatively - you can just use nargo to generate a plonk_vk.sol contract instead (using our example myCircuit from above):

cd circuits/myCircuit
nargo codegen-verifier

This will create a plonk_vk.sol file at circuits/myCircuit/contracts/ which you can then use in your hardhat project.

Working in Foundry

Once you've got your verifier contract - you can use it to verify and test your proof contract in foundry.

Once you've tested and evaluated your circuit - you can run:

# get a verifier contract to interact with in foundry tests
npx hardhat create-circuit-contract --circuit myCircuit

# and then to test your circuit in foundry (-ffi flag is to allow for nargo to be ran by foundry)
forge test --ffi

# or

yarn foundry

The current way to generate proofs in foundry is just an abstracted bash script that runs a CLI script to generate a proof for your circuit. My bashing isn't the best, so this may be prone to a few irregularities at first.

General House Keeping

• all .proof and ACIR files are gitignored by default - you can change this if you want to keep them in your repo.

Issues/Feature Requests

Any issues or features you'd like, hit me up, otherwise, happy hacking :)