Source: teal-sea/zeta-lab issue #140. Started 2026-08-24.
The question
The Ethereum Foundation's zkEVM Security Sprint publishes ethereum/soundcalc: an executable checker, its inputs (one TOML per zkVM), its outputs (reports/), pinned versions, and an external deadline (M3, early December 2026: 128 provable bits, proofs at or under 300 KiB, formal recursion argument).
This is the first instance of this laboratory's reproduction procedure applied outside mathematics. It is a transfer test first and a funnel second, and the two are kept apart.
Ten units: the eight in reports/summary.md plus RISC0 and Miden. Each unit gets two independent verdicts, never merged into one:
- REPRODUCTION, the version they claimed. Does the checked-in TOML follow from the vendor's own tree at the version the TOML names?
match/mismatch/no-generator/build-required. - FRESHNESS, the vendor's current release. Does the same TOML still describe it?
unchanged/drifted/unable-to-regenerate. Drift is not a security finding and is not reported as one.
Plus, recorded only: the vendor's own published bits beside soundcalc's figure.
Scope
Not in this instance: any ceiling or retuning computation. The question is whether the procedure crosses a domain without the mathematics carrying it. The transfer measure is hand interventions per unit; above about two the procedure has not crossed yet, and that number is the result.
Nothing here bears on RH (docs/08). Nothing here is a statement about a vendor, a team, or the security of any deployed system: every statement is scoped to the artifact at the pinned commit.
Disclosure discipline
A REPRODUCTION mismatch whose discrepancy could plausibly affect soundness is HELD: named in RESULTS.md as held, with no technical detail anywhere in this repository, and routed to the operator. Ethereum's and Immunefi's programs forfeit rewards on prior public disclosure. Clean and drift-only units publish normally, with their reproducers. No agent posts anything to any vendor, to the EF, to soundcalc issues, or to any bounty program.
id: soundcalc_reproduction
question: Do the ten zkVM soundness figures published by ethereum/soundcalc reproduce to the bit from the vendors' own trees at the versions the TOMLs name, and do the same TOMLs still describe the vendors' current releases?
frontier: summary.md at soundcalc d9078d64c9c3ae15b0931f6d249b2dc073194f15 (2026-07-23), read 2026-08-24 - Airbender 67, Pico 53, OpenVM 100, OpenVM2 100, SP1 100 (6.1.0), Venus 128, ZisK 128, zkDTVM 128; RISC0 and Miden have reports but are absent from the summary
proposed_attack: per unit, regenerate the parameter file from the vendor tree at the named version and at the latest tag, diff both against the checked-in TOML, rerun soundcalc at its pinned commit, compare every regime figure to the published summary
dead_routes:
- treating a freshness drift as a reproduction failure, they are different questions with different verdicts
- computing a retuned ceiling for any unit in this instance
required_oracles:
- soundcalc itself at commit d9078d64c9c3ae15b0931f6d249b2dc073194f15, run unmodified on the checked-in TOMLs and on any regenerated ones
- the vendors' own generators and source files at the pinned tags where they exist, read or run unmodified
- byte-level diff of TOML files and exact integer comparison of bit figures per regime
- the GitHub contents and tags API for tag, commit and file existence at a pinned ref
kill_conditions:
- soundcalc at the pinned commit does not reproduce its own summary.md from its own TOMLs
- a regenerated parameter file cannot be produced for a unit by any documented path, that unit is recorded no-generator and not guessed
- any figure that would require reading a vendor's intent rather than a vendor's file
agents_may:
- clone, pin and read vendor trees and soundcalc, and record every field
- read vendor source to locate parameters, citing file and line at the pinned commit
- count and record their own hand interventions per unit
agents_may_not:
- post to any vendor, to the EF, to soundcalc issues, or to any bounty program
- open or merge a pull request in this repository
- state a security level for any system, only whether the artifact reproduces
- alter a TOML or a vendor tree except by the vendor's own generator
- merge the reproduction and freshness verdicts into one
- publish any technical detail of a held unit