Home

🌲 (Defining) zero-knowledge proofs

tl;dr: A zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) system for an NP relation $R$ allows a prover, who has a statement $\mathbf{x}$ and a witness $\mathbf{w}$ to convince a verifier, who only has the statement $\mathbf{x}$, that $R(\mathbf{x}; \mathbf{w}) = 1$. Importantly, the proof leaks nothing about the secret witness $\mathbf{w}$. (e.g., a ZKP can be used...

Read more

🌲 NP relations

tl;dr: An NP relation $R(\mathbf{x}; \mathbf{w})$ is a formalization of an algorithm $R$ that verifies a solution $\mathbf{w}$ to a problem $\mathbf{x}$ (in time $\poly(|\mathbf{x}|+|\mathbf{w}|)$. For example, $\mathsf{Sudoku}(\mathbf{x}; \mathbf{w})$ verifies if $\mathbf{w}$ is a valid solution to the Sudoku puzzle $\mathbf{x}$. NP relations a...

Read more

🌲 BBS+ signatures

tl;dr: Do you want to sign (committed) field elements without relying on random oracles? Do you want to efficiently prove (in zero-knowledge) relations over your signed messages? BBS+ is here to help you! The BBS+ signature scheme is a transformation[^ASM08e] of the Boneh-Boyen-Shacham (BBS) group signature scheme[^BBS04] into a standalone sig...

Read more

🌲 How should a blockchain keep a secret?

tl;dr: We spoke about how a blockchain should keep a secret at the Next-Generation Secure Distributed Computing seminar at Schloss Dagstuhl. We sketched an approach based on trusted execution environments (TEEs) that could be practical, yet could still present interesting research challenges.

Read more

🌱 Bulletproofs IPA for multiexp

$ \def\prove{\mathsf{Prove}} \def\ver{\mathsf{Ver}} \def\A{\mathbf{A}} \def\B{\mathbf{B}} \def\bb{\mathbf{b}} $ tl;dr: This is a post-mortem write-up on how I failed to use the Bulletproofs IPA to convince a verifier that a multi-exponentiation $\A^\bb = \prod_i (A_i)^{b_i}$ was done correctly. The problem is that the Bulletproof verifier has t...

Read more