Posts tagged decentralization

Libra is a zero-knowledge proof protocol that achieves extremely fast prover time and succinct proof size and verification time. Not only does it have good complexity in terms of asymptotics, but also its actual running time is well within the bounds of enabling realistic applications. It can be applied in areas such as blockchain technology and privacy-preserving smart contracts. It is currently being implemented by Oasis Labs. This blog post is based on a paper authored by Tiancheng Xie, Jiaheng Zhang, Yupeng Zhang, Charalampos Papamanthou and Dawn Song.
An oracle is a service that provides data to smart contracts or other systems. Oracles obtain their data from trusted websites. But even those that relay data correctly cannot safely access users' web-session data, because they can't enforce privacy. DECO is a privacy-preserving oracle protocol. Using cryptographic techniques, it lets users prove facts about their web (TLS) sessions to oracles while hiding privacy-sensitive data. DECO can make private and public web data accessible to a rich spectrum of applications, for blockchains and traditional (non-blockchain) systems.
Achieving true decentralization requires decentralized cryptography. CHURP is a cryptographic protocol for secret sharing in decentralized settings. In such a setting where nodes may come and go, traditional secret sharing (e.g., Shamir's) is no longer secure. Featuring several fundamental innovations, CHURP accomplishes the mission while being 2300x more efficient than previous schemes!