4 ms·
Open source works well for very complicated pieces of software, except for complicated cryptography; the material used in ZCash was developed in papers as recen
by Ar-Curunir 10y ago
Open source works well for very complicated pieces of software, except for complicated cryptography; the material used in ZCash was developed in papers as recent as 4 yrs ago. Rest assured that most programmers understand nothing about the underlying SNARKs.
- wslh 10y agoYou are underestimating passionate and very smart people.
- Ar-Curunir 10y agoI am not underestimating anyone; even within theoretical cryptography, SNARKs are understood by a handful of people.
- wslh 10y agoI am a cofounder of a company in this space and three people in my company are in a position to understand it very well. For example Sergio who also blogs here: https://bitslog.wordpress.com https://bitslog.wordpress.com
- Ar-Curunir 10y agoI don't see anything there about zkSNARKs?
- wslh 10y agoSorry to get it personal but it seems you are very shortsighted and need to see a specific keyword to understand the capabilities of the people. Please let me know what specific topic of zkSNARK you find challenging to explain and we can write a blog post about it.
- Ar-Curunir 10y agoI don't want to see a specific keyword; all I'm saying is that there is nothing on that website indicating any great knowledge of theoretical cryptography. For instance: no proofs, formal definitions, nothing. Not even links to other websites hosting such things.
- wslh 10y agoI really feel frustrated by your lack of search/manual-crawling/link-clicking/understanding capabilities. He was the official security reviewer of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Then some extra references so you can continue your own search: - "MPF (Mental Poker Framework): A new family of practical and secure Mental Poker protocols" http://www.dc.uba.ar/inv/tesis/licenciatura/2010/lerner http://www.dc.uba.ar/inv/tesis/licenciatura/2010/lerner - MAVEPAY: a new lightweight payment scheme for peer to peer currency networks: https://bitslog.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/mavepay1.pdf https://bitslog.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/mavepay1.pdf - Strict Memory Hard Hashing Functions: http://www.hashcash.org/papers/memohash.pdf http://www.hashcash.org/papers/memohash.pdf referenced in the Ethereum original paper: http://gavwood.com/paper.pdf http://gavwood.com/paper.pdf
- Ar-Curunir 10y agoI am not doubting Sergio's security expertise, but security expertise != theoretical cryptography expertise. Crypto requires providing clear definitions and proofs of security. All I see in the first two links are adhoc constructions, with heuristic arguments for security; no security definitions, no reductions, no proofs. The last link is more formal, and talks about models of computation, but once again does not provide any reductions.
- wslh 10y agoAre you part of the Zcash team?
- joshumax 10y agoOff topic, I'd actually be very interested in a cryptographer's guide to zkSNARK...
- plasticmachine 10y agoSergio's a great guy, but he does NOT understand the mechanics behind SNARKS "very well". You're overestimating his grasp of the moon-math in SNARKS.