v0.0.4 - Journal Extraction & Borsh Serialization

🚀 Release v0.0.4

✨ Major Improvements

Fixed Journal Extraction from SegmentReceipt

• Properly implemented journal_bytes() method for SegmentReceipt
• Now correctly extracts journal data from receipt.claim.output.journal structure in RISC Zero 1.2
• Handles MaybePruned wrapper types appropriately

Added Borsh Serialization Support

• Guest programs now use Borsh serialization with env::commit_slice() for cross-language compatibility
• Added borsh-construct Python dependency for deserializing journal data
• Eliminated the 4x size expansion issue from u32-word encoding
• Journal data is now compact and portable between Rust and Python

📝 Demo & Documentation Updates

• Updated Merkle ZKP demo to use Borsh serialization
• Fixed demo to get journal from receipt (not SessionInfo)
• Added journal deserialization examples to README
• Updated Python version requirement to 3.8.3+ for borsh-construct
• Improved documentation of project structure and demo scripts

🔧 Other Changes

• Removed non-functional examples/ directory
• Updated all version references to 0.0.4
• Fixed demo paths in README

📦 Dependencies

• Added borsh v1.5 to guest Cargo.toml
• Added borsh-construct to Python dependencies

🎯 What This Means

Developers can now:

• Reliably extract journal data from both SegmentReceipt and SuccinctReceipt
• Use standard Borsh serialization for guest program outputs
• Parse journal data in Python with proper schema definitions
• Build zero-knowledge proofs with properly formatted public outputs

⚠️ Note

This is still an experimental pre-alpha release for Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3) Macs only.

🙏 Acknowledgments

Thanks to the RISC Zero team for guidance on the journal extraction API in v1.2.2.