How to serialize the proof into []byte array and deserialize it back?

[jingzhaoou]

Thanks a lot for developing such a great zk-SNARK library. I am able to run all the tests without any issues. In test/assert.go, I tried to serialize the proof into []byte and import it into a new proof. My code is like

buf := new(bytes.Buffer)
proof.WriteTo(buf)
fmt.Printf("Proof (%d): %s\n", len(buf.Bytes()), hex.EncodeToString(buf.Bytes()))

var proof2 groth16.Proof
bufSlice := buf.Bytes()
bufCopy := make([]byte, len(bufSlice))
copy(bufCopy, bufSlice)

fmt.Printf("bufCopy (%d): %s\n", len(bufCopy), hex.EncodeToString(bufCopy))

reader := bytes.NewReader(bufCopy)
proof2.ReadFrom(reader) // <==== crashed on this line
buf2 := new(bytes.Buffer)
proof2.WriteTo(buf2)

fmt.Printf("ProofCopy (%d): %s\n", len(buf2.Bytes()), hex.EncodeToString(buf2.Bytes()))

err = groth16.Verify(proof2, vk, validPublicWitness)
checkError(err)

I ran into the following errors:

--- FAIL: TestCircuitSignature (3.11s)
    --- FAIL: TestCircuitSignature/BN254/groth16 (0.94s)
panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference [recovered]
        panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference
[signal SIGSEGV: segmentation violation code=0x1 addr=0x0 pc=0x163c051]

I sincerely appreciate your help!

[jingzhaoou]

Never mind. I am too green with Golang. I just figured out the bug in my code. Instead of var proof2 groth16.Proof, I should use proof2 := groth16.NewProof(curve). Things work fine afterward.

Thanks a lot!