Circuitree: a Datalog Reasoner in Zero-Knowledge

Driven by the increased consciousness in data ownership and privacy, zero-knowledge proofs
(ZKPs) have become a popular tool to convince a third party of the truthfulness of a statement without
disclosing any further information. As ZKPs are rather complex to design, frameworks that transform high-
level languages into ZKPs have been proposed.
We propose Circuitree, a Datalog reasoner in zero-knowledge. Datalog is a high-level declarative logic
language that is generally used for querying. Furthermore, as a logic language, it can also be used to solve
logic problems. An application using Circuitree can efficiently generate ZKPs, based on Datalog rules and
encrypted data, to prove that a certain conclusion follows from a Datalog ruleset and encrypted input data.
Compared to existing frameworks, which generally use their own limited imperative languages, Circuitree
uses an existing high-level declarative language.
We point out several applications for Circuitree, including EU Digital COVID Certificates and privacy-
preserving access control for peer-to-peer (p2p) networks. Circuitree’s performance is evaluated for access
control in a p2p network. First results show that our approach allows for fast proofs and proof verification
for this application.