verifying-crypto-with-lean/README.md
mrwulf 63a809dd2c book overhaul move 6: the Second Summit chapter + the book ends once
New Chapter 13, 'The Second Summit: A Hash-Based Pyramid' — SLH-DSA
(FIPS 205) as the transfer experiment for the whole method:

- opens on leaf 18 as the anomaly; correctness-vs-security across the
  quantum divide ('a correct implementation of a broken lock is still a
  broken lock')
- Lamport -> Winternitz chains with the checksum see-saw run twice on
  real w=16 numbers, including a concrete failed forgery (480 -> 479,
  digit 14 -> 13)
- FORS worked at napkin scale (k=2, a=2, one reuse = one forgery) and
  real scale (28 of 57,344, exponent 14)
- the virtual hypertree: digest split 21/7/2 to the bit, the 54-bit
  meter peeled 9 bits per layer, verification priced exactly (254 fixed
  oracle calls; the see-saw itself caps a layer at 510, so worst case
  3,824 — the naive 525*35 bound is unreachable, and the chapter says
  why); ~2^72 to build vs ~2^12 to check
- the eleven certificates, the loop-to-fold bridges, the honest
  'visible, not correct' boundary (no second semantics — and why the
  natural move fails), the cone-growth table, the t_l/t_len naming
  inversion told as the war story it was, the apex as an audit
  invitation with the verbatim theorem named
- 'The leaf, live': leaf-vs-head precision ('plausible, and wrong
  twice'), the three-clause self-reference ledger (attested machinery /
  attested scheme / honest gap), one-command tryit
- six exercises with pathway'd solutions; checkpoint hands the
  who-checks-them question to the finale

Structural: attestation renamed ch14 and now carries the book's single
ending (where-to-go, further reading, final reframe, prospective
checkpoint — moved from ch12); its two interior checkpoints demoted to
bigidea/tryit so the terminal checkpoint stands alone; opening now
receives ch13's baton. ch12 ends as a chapter. Front matter: three-summit
arc, fourteen-week plan, honest discussion-exercise count; ch01 promise
ladder extended to Chapters 13/14; glossary +5 entries (and the
pre-existing Hasse-bound misordering fixed); README fourteen chapters +
build.sh recipe.

Every constant verified against fips205-slhdsa-verified and
lean-transparency-log by four adversarial checkers; arithmetic
independently recomputed; didactic panel scored the chapter 9/8 —
the book's high-water mark. Build: 128 pages, zero unresolved refs.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-08 10:39:08 +02:00

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# Verifying Cryptography with Lean 4
**A hands-on curriculum for undergraduates with zero formal-verification
background** — from `1 + 1 = 2` to reading (and extending) real,
machine-checked proofs that production elliptic-curve code is correct.
This is the educational companion to a family of verification projects in
which complete Ed25519 proof pyramids (from
[curve25519-dalek](https://github.com/dalek-cryptography/curve25519-dalek)
and three production forks — field, group law, scalars, and the signature
verifier itself) and the Pasta curves' field layer were machine-checked in
Lean 4 against models extracted from the actual Rust sources:
| Companion project | What is verified there |
|---|---|
| [dalek-ed25519-verified](https://github.com/saymrwulf/dalek-ed25519-verified) | the complete pyramid, upstream dalek: field 𝔽ₚ + Edwards group law + scalar arithmetic mod + the four-tier signature apex (accept ⇔ decompress(R) = [k](A)+[s]B, hash opaque) |
| [anza-ed25519-verified](https://github.com/saymrwulf/anza-ed25519-verified) | the complete pyramid, Solana's fork, its own extraction |
| [risc0-ed25519-verified](https://github.com/saymrwulf/risc0-ed25519-verified) | the complete pyramid, RISC Zero's fork |
| [betrusted-ed25519-verified](https://github.com/saymrwulf/betrusted-ed25519-verified) | the complete pyramid, Betrusted's fork |
| [pasta-pallas-verified](https://github.com/saymrwulf/pasta-pallas-verified) | Pallas modulus primality (Lucas/Pratt), Montgomery foundations |
| [formal-verification-control](https://github.com/saymrwulf/formal-verification-control) | the method: invariants, terrain map, failure map, tooling |
## The book
**[`main.pdf`](main.pdf)** — fourteen chapters + interlude + three
appendices, full color, built with LaTeX/TikZ from the sources in this
repo (`./build.sh`, tectonic, no root needed). No prior Lean or formal
methods assumed; high-school algebra and a little programming suffice.
1. **Why Verify?** — the carry bug testing cannot find
2. **Meet Lean** — programs, types, inductive data
3. **Propositions as Types** — CurryHoward: proofs *are* programs
4. **Tactics** — proving as a dialogue with the goal state
5. **Numbers and Automation**`omega`, `ring`, `norm_num`, `decide`, and the `simp` discipline
6. **Modular Arithmetic** — clock worlds, fields, why 2²⁵⁵ 19
7. **Primality Certificates** — convincing a paranoid kernel a 77-digit number is prime
8. **From Rust to Lean** — the Charon/Aeneas extraction pipeline
9. **The Denotation Bridge** — the commuting square at the heart of it all
***Interlude*** — a complete verification, entirely by hand, then re-enacted in Lean line by line
10. **Verifying a Field** — the full campaign, told honestly (including the crash)
11. **Honesty and Axioms**`#print axioms`, hollow certificates, trusted bases
12. **The Pyramid** — group law, scalars, signatures, and where you come in
13. **The Second Summit** — a hash-based pyramid for the quantum era: SLH-DSA (FIPS 205), Winternitz chains and the checksum see-saw, the virtual hypertree, the eleven certificates and their cone-growth table, and leaf 18 live
14. **The Attestation Protocol** — what it takes to make "it is proven" checkable by a stranger; closes with *Go and touch the real thing*: a guided reading of the estate's **live transparency log** (ltl.zkdefi.org — 19 leaves, the four ed25519 pyramids at 44 certificates, the log's own Merkle proofs as leaf 17, and the first post-quantum leaf, SLH-DSA, as leaf 18), including the fifteen-minute verify-it-yourself exercise
Appendices: **A** — the pen-and-paper toolkit (recipe cards with drills);
**B** — guided walkthroughs of every exercise-file hole; **C** — a tour of
the real repositories. Plus a glossary and a fourteen-week course plan.
The didactic machinery, deliberately heavy:
- **Pen-and-paper worked examples in every chapter** — computations with
the *real* constants (2²⁵⁵19, radix 2⁵¹, the fold constant 19, the
actual 254-squaring inversion chain, the true Pratt tree
p1 = 2²·3·65147·Q), because the real numbers carry the real arguments.
Highlights: inverting 19 modulo the 77-digit prime in five lines of
Euclid; a fully hand-checked primality certificate for 97; the ×19 fold
derived at the real weights; the 16p subtraction constant audited to the
bit (8 fails by 151); the complete BernsteinLange completeness chain.
- **Solutions immediately after every exercise set** — each one leads with
the *pathway* (how a person finds the answer) before the answer itself.
- Boxed **Big idea / Try it / Pitfall / Aha / Checkpoint** elements, TikZ
figures throughout.
Everything the book claims about the companion projects reflects their
actual, auditable state — including open frontiers.
## The exercises (they run!)
`exercises/ChNN.lean` are working files with `sorry` holes;
`solutions/ChNN.lean` are complete. **Every solution file compiles with
zero errors** against the pinned toolchain (Lean `v4.30.0-rc2`, Mathlib
`5450b53e`); solutions to proof exercises contain no `sorry`.
Setup (one-time, ~5 min + Mathlib cache download):
```bash
# 1. install elan (Lean version manager) if you haven't:
curl https://elan.lean-lang.org/elan-init.sh -sSf | sh
# 2. fetch the Mathlib build cache (do NOT build Mathlib yourself):
cd verifying-crypto-with-lean
lake exe cache get
# 3. open the folder in VS Code with the "Lean 4" extension, or:
lake build Solutions # compiles all solution files as a check
```
Chapters 24 need no Mathlib at all — you can start them with any Lean 4
install while the cache downloads.
## Building the book
The repo's own recipe (tectonic, user-space, no root — installs itself on
first run):
```bash
./build.sh
```
Or any TeX Live ≥ 2023 with `tikz`, `tcolorbox`, `listings`, `lmodern`:
```bash
pdflatex main.tex && pdflatex main.tex # twice for the TOC
```
## Honesty ledger
In the spirit of Chapter 11:
- All `solutions/*.lean` were compiled (and their `#eval` outputs checked
against their comments) at authoring time with the pinned versions above.
- Exercise templates compile with `sorry` warnings only.
- The book's claims about the companion projects (what is proven, what is
frontier) mirror those repos' own READMEs and TRUSTED-BASE ledgers at the
time of writing; the repos, not this book, are the source of truth.
Re-audited 2026-07-06 after the signature apex reached its final
four-tier form (coherence pass 4): chapter 12's status diagram, apex
section, and audit-drill solution, chapter 11's boundary example,
chapter 8's extraction notes, the repo tour, and this table were
brought up to the proven state.
- Didactic revision (2026-07-06, same day): the book now states and keeps
a "ratchet rule" (chapter 1) — every load-bearing idea worked at napkin
scale AND at real scale with the full 77-digit constants printed,
nothing elided. Chapter 12 gained the missing rungs: the addition law
run by hand on a mod-13 curve and then on the real base point (with a
machine-supplied quotient witness audited by casting out nines and
elevens), the scalar cycle felt on the napkin curve, decompression run
twice (mod-13 sign-bit walk, then the real compressed base point:
byte-31 sign bit, and the full-size hand verification 5·y_B 4 = 4·p,
every digit printed), plus a new paper exercise (12.4). Every printed
constant was machine-verified before typesetting.
- The PDF in the repo is built from the committed sources by `./build.sh`
and recommitted alongside source changes; rebuild it yourself if you
don't trust binaries (good instinct), and you should get the same
fourteen-chapter book.
- The three named solution certificates were kernel-audited
(coherence pass 2, 2026-07-03): `Ch09.add_spec` depends on
`[propext, Classical.choice, Quot.sound]`; `Ch09.mulVal_spec` and
`Ch12.addFixed_spec` on `[propext, Quot.sound]` only. The Interlude's
"compiled and axiom-audited" phrase shipped one pass before its audit
had actually been run — caught by the verification projects' own
coherence process and made true; recorded here in the spirit of
Chapter 11.