What Is Semaphore?
Overview​
Semaphore is a zero-knowledge protocol that allows users to prove their membership in a group and send signals such as votes or endorsements without revealing their identity. Additionally, it provides a simple mechanism to prevent double-signaling. Use cases include private voting, whistleblowing, anonymous DAOs and mixers.
Features​
With Semaphore, you can allow your users to do the following:
- Create a private identity and get a provable anonymous public identity.
- Add an anonymous public identity to a group (i.e. Merkle tree).
- Anonymously broadcast a signal if the user joined the group and hasn't yet used the nullifer.
Semaphore uses on-chain smart contracts and off-chain zero-knowledge components that work in tandem.
- Off chain, zero-knowledge components allow users to generate identities and proofs.
- On chain, smart contracts manage groups and verify proofs that, if valid, allow the smart contract to update its state.
Developer benefits​
Semaphore is designed to be a simple and generic privacy layer for decentralized applications (dApps) on Ethereum. It encourages modular application design, allowing dApp developers to choose and customize the on-chain and off-chain components they need.
About the code​
The core of the protocol is in the circuit logic. In addition to circuits, Semaphore provides Solidity contracts and JavaScript libraries that allow developers to generate zero-knowledge proofs and verify them with minimal effort.
The Semaphore V2 codebase was audited with a focus on the smart contracts and the Circom circuits. See the audit summary.
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If you are using the previous version of Semaphore, see the Semaphore V1 documentation (code).