Public inputs are appended to the proof

[signorecello]

Noticed this inconsistency, as the Noir smart contract expects proofs to be separate from public inputs:

function verify(bytes calldata _proof, bytes32[] calldata _publicInputs) external view returns (bool)

While bb.js expects them to be appended to the proof. This requires devs to slice them out before making calls to the smart contract:

await api.acirVerifyProof(acirComposer, proof, false); // we can just pass the proof here because it already has the public inputs

const publicInputs = proof.slice(0, 32); 
const slicedProof = proof.slice(32);
await contract.verify(slicedProof, [publicInputs]); // but we have to slice them before calling the contract

Would be a nice devex improvement to make bb.js output (and consume) proof and public inputs separately, to be consistent with the verifier contract

[Savio-Sou]

cc @rahul-kothari not sure if this is low-hanging, but certainly a neat DevEx fruit for Noir devs making use of bb.js.

[jonybur]

Can we do it so that the verify function is able to differentiate between the publicInputs and proof by receiving only one argument?

[rahul-kothari]

yea this seems reasonsable! If it isn't too much work and doesn't break anything in bb.js, let's do it!

Apologies for the late response: was in sandbox mode for the last week

[Savio-Sou]

Update: Following the launch of NoirJS, publicInputs and proof are now split at the Noir level and Noir devs are no longer required to interact with bb.js directly.