ZkApp ‘Hello World’ Tutorial by Evan Shapiro

zkApps are smart contracts built on Mina Protocol. Currently they are not live on mainnet, but it IS now possible to play around with the code and produce a zkApp and deploy it to the Berkelely Testnet Alpha. To help developers eager to get started Evan Shapiro, CEO of Mina Foundation has written a simple ‘Hello World’ zkApp that you can deploy and test yourself.

In this tutorial, we will code a zkApp step by step, from start to finish. We will write a basic smart contract that stores a number as on-chain state and contains logic to only allow this number to be replaced by its square (e.g. 2 -> 4 -> 16…). We will create this project using the Mina zkApp CLI, write our smart contract code, and then use a local Mina blockchain to interact with it. Future tutorials will introduce further concepts and patterns. But we hope this helps you get started with SnarkyJS, zkApps, and programming with zero knowledge proofs. Then you can go further by reading the zkApps docs and additional tutorials.

Evan Shaprio

You can find the full source code for the ‘Hello World’ zkApp HERE. You can also find full instructions on deploying the zkApp HERE

We have a sister website entitled zkappsformina.com, where you can find all the current WIP zkApps.