8 ms·

Why and How zk-Snark Works (2019)

amitport 6y ago
We need more papers like this. Very nice. I wonder though if this work would be recognized for academic progress in research institutions? Specifically, is it publishable in some top-tier journal? (If so, which one?)
- lopsidedBrain 6y ago
  One of my highest-cited papers didn't pass peer-review. But that's okay. The citations (of the pre-print version) speak for themselves. If papers like these are good enough that new students entering the field use it as a ramp-up resource, they won't hesitate to cite it over and over again when they submit something for peer-review. So journal publication is not the only means of recognition. Speaking of which, computer science is a bit weird in that conference papers tend to have higher visibility than journals, even though the latter still has some of its grandfathered glory. Not all conferences are equal, obviously. Some have a more rigorous submission process than others. But our field definitely carries a bit of skepticism about the value added by journal publishers.
- red_admiral 6y ago
  In crypto, eprint.iacr.org is where you want your paper to be - it's their own version of arXiv, so I'm almost a bit surprised this isn't published there. If your paper is good, on eprint and you spread the word a bit, then it will get citations - often more than if you publish in a 2nd tier conference - and when it's popular enough then eventually one of the main conferences (journals are less popular in crypto) will accept it in some form. This happened among other things to several of Dan Bernstein's papers (the guy who invented curve25519 among other things).
- rrmm 6y ago
  They'd be published as review articles or distributed by the academic institution as technical papers or technical reports.
- baby 6y ago
  I wrote a similar survey a while ago on lattice attacks on RSA[1] and got it rejected from eprint because it was not new research. Anecdotal but there is that. [1]: https://github.com/mimoo/RSA-and-LLL-attacks/blob/master/survey_final.pdf https://github.com/mimoo/RSA-and-LLL-attacks/blob/master/sur... On the other hands there are a number of such "tutorials" being published on eprint, so I think if it's sort of random on a pre-print, then it must be pretty hard to publish this sort of papers in serious journals.
seibelj 6y ago
I work in blockchain / cryptocurrency (one and the same) for a long time now and zksnarks are a fundamental building block for the future of generalized financial privacy. Many people don’t understand why financial privacy is so crucial - although many of these same people will argue through the teeth that other forms of privacy are absolutely essential. Governments throughout the world are restricting cash more and more. Why? It’s not that cash is paper. It’s that cash eliminates state tracking. The purpose of cash in a digital world is to prevent the state from creating a financial panopticon. Cryptocurrency accomplishes the same goal, but far more effectively. How can I explain to you guys how crucial this is? I guarantee you in 40 years the creation of bitcoin will be seen as a watershed moment in society.
- gspr 6y ago
  I do want financial privacy. But I also want a sound and mild policy of inflation as managed by western central banks. Can I have both? I suspect that as with so many other matters of privacy, most of the solution is legal and political rather than technical.
  - SkyMarshal 6y ago
    Privacy and inflation in cryptocurrency are not technologically mutually exclusive, they’re mostly orthogonal. Eg, yes, technically you can have both. The problem is that in purely a private, zero-knowledge cryptocurrency, it’s difficult or impossible to inspect the actual currency issuance rate and ensure that some Byzantine miner/validator hasn’t found a way to hack the issuance algorithm and issue more currency (to themselves) than the system is designed to. For example, ZCash had a famous bug regarding this issue a few years ago, that they patched before disclosing it. That’s an ongoing technical challenge the industry is working on.
    - aspenmayer 6y ago
      I’d like to know more about the bug mentioned in $ZEC, if you have a link?
tromp 6y ago
Another great and more extensive resource on zero knowledge proofs is available at http://people.cs.georgetown.edu/jthaler/ProofsArgsAndZK.html http://people.cs.georgetown.edu/jthaler/ProofsArgsAndZK.html
krcz 6y ago
By coincidence, I finished reading that document yesterday. Really good one, it builds zk-SNARK understanding step by step. Sometimes though it possibly goes to deep in explaining basic concepts - I'm not sure if someone who didn't have experience with modular arithmetic would be able to get to understand it in a way that would be enough for the whole concept. Assuming basic mathematics knowledge as modular arithmetic, polynomials, interpolation, etc. might be a better approach in my feeling, but YMMV.
capnorange 6y ago
To see zk-Snarks in action, there is a cool MMO space-conquest game based on it. http://zkga.me/ http://zkga.me/ https://blog.zkga.me/ https://blog.zkga.me/

We need more papers like this. Very nice. I wonder though if this work would be recognized for academic progress in research institutions? Specifically, is it publishable in some top-tier journal? (If so, which one?)

lopsidedBrain 6y ago
One of my highest-cited papers didn't pass peer-review. But that's okay. The citations (of the pre-print version) speak for themselves. If papers like these are good enough that new students entering the field use it as a ramp-up resource, they won't hesitate to cite it over and over again when they submit something for peer-review. So journal publication is not the only means of recognition. Speaking of which, computer science is a bit weird in that conference papers tend to have higher visibility than journals, even though the latter still has some of its grandfathered glory. Not all conferences are equal, obviously. Some have a more rigorous submission process than others. But our field definitely carries a bit of skepticism about the value added by journal publishers.
red_admiral 6y ago
In crypto, eprint.iacr.org is where you want your paper to be - it's their own version of arXiv, so I'm almost a bit surprised this isn't published there. If your paper is good, on eprint and you spread the word a bit, then it will get citations - often more than if you publish in a 2nd tier conference - and when it's popular enough then eventually one of the main conferences (journals are less popular in crypto) will accept it in some form. This happened among other things to several of Dan Bernstein's papers (the guy who invented curve25519 among other things).
rrmm 6y ago
They'd be published as review articles or distributed by the academic institution as technical papers or technical reports.
baby 6y ago
I wrote a similar survey a while ago on lattice attacks on RSA[1] and got it rejected from eprint because it was not new research. Anecdotal but there is that. [1]: https://github.com/mimoo/RSA-and-LLL-attacks/blob/master/survey_final.pdf https://github.com/mimoo/RSA-and-LLL-attacks/blob/master/sur... On the other hands there are a number of such "tutorials" being published on eprint, so I think if it's sort of random on a pre-print, then it must be pretty hard to publish this sort of papers in serious journals.

seibelj 6y ago

I work in blockchain / cryptocurrency (one and the same) for a long time now and zksnarks are a fundamental building block for the future of generalized financial privacy. Many people don’t understand why financial privacy is so crucial - although many of these same people will argue through the teeth that other forms of privacy are absolutely essential. Governments throughout the world are restricting cash more and more. Why? It’s not that cash is paper. It’s that cash eliminates state tracking. The purpose of cash in a digital world is to prevent the state from creating a financial panopticon. Cryptocurrency accomplishes the same goal, but far more effectively. How can I explain to you guys how crucial this is? I guarantee you in 40 years the creation of bitcoin will be seen as a watershed moment in society.

gspr 6y ago
I do want financial privacy. But I also want a sound and mild policy of inflation as managed by western central banks. Can I have both? I suspect that as with so many other matters of privacy, most of the solution is legal and political rather than technical.
- SkyMarshal 6y ago
  Privacy and inflation in cryptocurrency are not technologically mutually exclusive, they’re mostly orthogonal. Eg, yes, technically you can have both. The problem is that in purely a private, zero-knowledge cryptocurrency, it’s difficult or impossible to inspect the actual currency issuance rate and ensure that some Byzantine miner/validator hasn’t found a way to hack the issuance algorithm and issue more currency (to themselves) than the system is designed to. For example, ZCash had a famous bug regarding this issue a few years ago, that they patched before disclosing it. That’s an ongoing technical challenge the industry is working on.
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    I’d like to know more about the bug mentioned in $ZEC, if you have a link?

tromp 6y ago

Another great and more extensive resource on zero knowledge proofs is available at http://people.cs.georgetown.edu/jthaler/ProofsArgsAndZK.html http://people.cs.georgetown.edu/jthaler/ProofsArgsAndZK.html

krcz 6y ago

By coincidence, I finished reading that document yesterday. Really good one, it builds zk-SNARK understanding step by step. Sometimes though it possibly goes to deep in explaining basic concepts - I'm not sure if someone who didn't have experience with modular arithmetic would be able to get to understand it in a way that would be enough for the whole concept. Assuming basic mathematics knowledge as modular arithmetic, polynomials, interpolation, etc. might be a better approach in my feeling, but YMMV.

capnorange 6y ago

To see zk-Snarks in action, there is a cool MMO space-conquest game based on it. http://zkga.me/ http://zkga.me/ https://blog.zkga.me/ https://blog.zkga.me/