3 ms·

I haven't kept up with the space in some time but if this is what I'm remembering, all that's needed is one participant in the ceremony to keep their secret for

by mptest 3y ago

I haven't kept up with the space in some time but if this is what I'm remembering, all that's needed is one participant in the ceremony to keep their secret forever/"lose" it for the security to be guaranteed. That's why as many participants as possible is a good thing. all that said I'm a student/layman and not an expert in anything

quickthrower2 3y ago
What makes me think it is complicated is that a hash to all zeros would do this sort of a job, as no one could reverse this and find a key that would map to it. So whatever they are doing doesn’t have a natural “nothing up my sleeve” number and needs a social construct like this.
- mptest 3y ago
  If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying they don't need the social ceremony where everyone adds obfuscation, because there is some simple way for one user to derive the same security? Does that not rely on us all trusting that initial user who "hashes to all zeroes" to maintain the secret? The goal here is not only to establish security but security anyone can participate in to add security, such that everyone trusts it, because anyone could have participated. Even if that's more complicated, it's more trustworthy. Again though, I am not an expert in anything, I'm a student of computer science. I may be completely misunderstanding you and if I am, I apologize. It could be said though the social construct/contract is kind of the whole point of the decentralized protocols
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    Like you I am no expert. What I mean is you can construct a challenge that is provably very hard, such as a hash input that produces zeros (translates to near infinite compute power in terms of mining, or some mathematical or quantum computing breakthrough that renders modern cryptography useless then this Ethereum thing is the least of your worries).
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - rrobukef 3y ago
      They don't need one number, they need two (or more) that are related in such a way they have cryptographic properties. And the math says to derive them from a seed. However the seed must be secret because it's a back-door. Luckily everybody can generate their own seed and their contributions can be combined without knowing the seeds. All zeros won't work because they don't have the properties.
robocat 3y ago
From FAQ further down the page: What needs to go wrong for the safety of the Ceremony to break? The ceremony has a "1-of-N" trust assumption, which means that only a single participant in the entire ceremony needs to destroy or otherwise forget their secret input for everything to be secure. To break the Ceremony output, every participant would have to strip apart the software that they are using to contribute, get that software to give them the secret, and then collude with every single other participant to reconstruct the final secret. A more realistic failure mode is a common bug which leaks the randomness. To combat this, this site has been audited and there are alternative implementations of the contribution software built on entirely different software stacks. This is why there will be thousands of participants using different pieces of software on different operating systems to help prevent single points of failure both in the people and hardware/software.

by mptest 3y ago

quickthrower2 3y ago

What makes me think it is complicated is that a hash to all zeros would do this sort of a job, as no one could reverse this and find a key that would map to it. So whatever they are doing doesn’t have a natural “nothing up my sleeve” number and needs a social construct like this.

mptest 3y ago
If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying they don't need the social ceremony where everyone adds obfuscation, because there is some simple way for one user to derive the same security? Does that not rely on us all trusting that initial user who "hashes to all zeroes" to maintain the secret? The goal here is not only to establish security but security anyone can participate in to add security, such that everyone trusts it, because anyone could have participated. Even if that's more complicated, it's more trustworthy. Again though, I am not an expert in anything, I'm a student of computer science. I may be completely misunderstanding you and if I am, I apologize. It could be said though the social construct/contract is kind of the whole point of the decentralized protocols
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Like you I am no expert. What I mean is you can construct a challenge that is provably very hard, such as a hash input that produces zeros (translates to near infinite compute power in terms of mining, or some mathematical or quantum computing breakthrough that renders modern cryptography useless then this Ethereum thing is the least of your worries).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - rrobukef 3y ago
    They don't need one number, they need two (or more) that are related in such a way they have cryptographic properties. And the math says to derive them from a seed. However the seed must be secret because it's a back-door. Luckily everybody can generate their own seed and their contributions can be combined without knowing the seeds. All zeros won't work because they don't have the properties.

robocat 3y ago

From FAQ further down the page: What needs to go wrong for the safety of the Ceremony to break? The ceremony has a "1-of-N" trust assumption, which means that only a single participant in the entire ceremony needs to destroy or otherwise forget their secret input for everything to be secure. To break the Ceremony output, every participant would have to strip apart the software that they are using to contribute, get that software to give them the secret, and then collude with every single other participant to reconstruct the final secret. A more realistic failure mode is a common bug which leaks the randomness. To combat this, this site has been audited and there are alternative implementations of the contribution software built on entirely different software stacks. This is why there will be thousands of participants using different pieces of software on different operating systems to help prevent single points of failure both in the people and hardware/software.