Signed Bytes Chapters Chapter 01

A field guide to zkTLS

Take a proof apart, one chapter at a time.

Primus lets you prove something about a web session without handing over the session. The cryptography holds. Most of the mistakes happen in the space between a valid signature and a correct integration, and that space is where this guide lives. Every chapter carries something you operate rather than read: a real attestation you can break, a verifier you can misconfigure on purpose, a game that charges you for the check you skipped. Nothing is mocked, and nothing is promised before it is built.

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Chapters

shipped, and what is on the bench

Every chapter is something you operate rather than something you read: an instrument, a game, a set of cards. Each one is its own deployment, so it opens in a new tab. The sealed rows are real slots with nothing announced in them yet, which is the honest state of a series that follows what Primus ships.

01

The Attestation Inspector

An attestation has nine fields. Seven are hashed. The other two are the ones most integrations read first.

Paste a proof, break a field, watch the two verdicts split

 Read ↗ 02

The reserve desk

A stablecoin publishes its backing ratio from zkTLS balance proofs. Every proof verifies. Some of them still lie.

Five rounds against a CFO who wants a better number than you can prove

 Read ↗
03 Sealed
04 Sealed
05 Sealed
06 Sealed
07 Sealed
08 Sealed
09 Sealed
10 Sealed

Where it goes next

The series is numbered and open ended. It follows what Primus actually ships rather than a table of contents written in advance, and the format follows the subject: a tool where you need to take something apart, a game where a rule only lands once it has cost you something, a set of cards where the point is to remember it afterwards.

  • Instruments. Paste something real, break a field, watch what the verifier does and does not notice.
  • Games. Play the other side. Ship an integration with a check missing and find out which attack walks through the gap you left.
  • Cards and quizzes. The short ones. Twelve cards on what a proof actually proves, answerable in a minute on a phone.

Chapters are announced when they are built, not before.

Start with chapter one

paste one, take it apart

Chapter one is not an article about the Attestation Inspector, it is the Attestation Inspector. Paste a real proof or mint one in the browser: it recomputes the digest byte for byte the way the contract does, recovers the signer from the raw hash, and draws the packed bytes at true byte width. Nine checks in two columns, and a short quiz at the end that only makes sense if you actually pressed the buttons.

Open chapter 01