Avant-propos

Zero-knowledge proofs have emerged as a transformative technology in the blockchain space, offering solutions for both privacy and scalability challenges. Among these, STARKs (Scalable Transparent ARguments of Knowledge) stand out as a particularly powerful innovation. Unlike traditional proof systems, STARKs rely solely on collision-resistant hash functions, making them post-quantum secure and eliminating the need for trusted setups.

However, writing general-purpose programs that can generate cryptographic proofs has historically been a significant challenge. Developers needed deep expertise in cryptography and complex mathematical concepts to create verifiable computations, making it impractical for mainstream adoption.

This is where Cairo comes in. As a general-purpose programming language designed specifically for creating provable programs, Cairo abstracts away the underlying cryptographic complexities while maintaining the full power of STARKs. Strongly inspired by Rust, Cairo has been built to help you create provable programs without requiring specific knowledge of its underlying architecture, allowing you to focus on the program logic itself.

Les développeurs blockchain qui souhaitent déployer des contrats sur Starknet utiliseront le langage de programmation Cairo pour écrire leurs contrats intelligents. Ceci permet au Starknet OS de générer des traces d'exécution pour les transactions afin d'être prouvées par un prouveur, pour ensuite être vérifiées sur Ethereum L1 avant d'actualiser l'état de Starknet.

However, Cairo is not only for blockchain developers. As a general purpose programming language, it can be used for any computation that would benefit from being proved on one computer and verified on other machines. Powered by a Rust VM, and a next-generation prover, the execution and proof generation of Cairo programs is blazingly fast - making Cairo the best tool for building provable applications.

Ce livre a pour cible des développeurs avec une connaissance basique de programmation. La rédaction accessible et compréhensive du contenu vous aidera à augmenter vos connaissances de Cairo, mais aussi vos compétences de programmation en général. Lancez vous pour tout savoir sur Cairo !

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the help of the Cairo community. We would like to thank every contributor for their contributions to this book!

We would like to thank the Rust community for the Rust Book, which has been a great source of inspiration for this book. Many examples and explanations have been adapted from the Rust Book to fit the Cairo programming language, as the two languages share many similarities.