Issue #53
Paper of the Week:
Paper Title: Pointproofs: Aggregating Proofs for Multiple Vector Commitments.
TLDR:
Vector commitments allow a committer to commit to a vector of N values and then selectively reveal elements of the committed vector, proving that they correspond to the original commitment.
To make the tradeoff between storage and bandwidth more attractive, we need to reduce the proof size. Because individual proofs need to be cryptographically hard to forge, their sizes cannot be reduced too far. Instead, the savings come from having a single short proof for multiple revealed values.
In many distributed applications, the commitments, values, and proofs come from multiple sources that are not even aware of each other’s data. This presents two problems that are not solved by subvector commitments: (i) there is no single entity that can produce a single proof for all the values, and (ii) proofs need to be with respect to multiple different commitments.
This work constructs an efficient commitment scheme with small commitments and proofs where a user can independently commit to her variables and provide short proofs for any subset of them.
The authors show how to apply their proposed work to smart-contract-based transactions on blockchains and evaluate them compared to alternative solutions.
They also implement this work and evaluate its performance for various parameters.
Authors: Sergey Gorbunov*†, Leonid Reyzin*‡, Hoeteck Wee§✜, and Zhenfei Zhang*,
Affiliations: * Algorand, † University of Waterloo, ‡ Boston University, § CNRS, ENS, PSL, ✜ NTT Research.
Security:
1. Paper Title: Bank run Payment Channel Networks.
Summary: This work introduces a framework for launching Bankrun attacks, and develops three strategies with a focus on minimising the cost, draining important channels, and locking most amount of coins, respectively.
Authors: Zhichun Lu*, Runchao Han†‡, and Jiangshan Yu†,
Affiliations: * Zhejiang Gongshang University, † Monash University and ‡ CSIRO-Data61.
Privacy:
No papers.
Scalability:
1. Paper Title: zkRelay: Facilitating Sidechains using zkSNARK-based Chain-Relays.
Summary: This work facilitates trusted cross-blockchain state proofs by implementing a chain-relay that validates block headers from proof-of-work blockchains.
Authors: Martin Westerkamp* and Jacob Eberhardt*,
Affiliations: * Technische Universita ̈t Berlin.
Proofs:
1. Paper Title: Hierarchical One-out-of-Many Proofs With Applications to Blockchain Privacy and Ring Signatures.
Summary: A new method of instantiating one-out-of-many proofs which reduces the proof generation time by an order of magnitude and in certain practical applications also helps to fasten the verification process of multiple proofs two or more times.
Authors: Aram Jivanyan* and Tigran Mamikonyan*,
Affiliations: * Zcoin.
Consensus:
1. Paper Title: Consensus for Crosschain Communications.
Summary: This work reviews the usage scenarios of crosschain communications: value transfer and atomic swaps, reading, writing, and state pinning.
Authors: Peter Robinson*
Affiliations: * ConsenSys.
Tokenomics:
1. Paper Title: A System Dynamics Model of Bitcoin: Mining as an Efficient Market and the Possibility of ‘Peak Hash’.
Summary: The possibility of a decrease in the network hash rate from the next halving event (May 2020) is exposed, implying that the network may be close to ’peak hash’, if the price of bitcoin and the revenues from transaction fees will remain at approximately the present level.
Authors: Davide Lasi* and Lukas Saul†,
Affiliations: * MIT and † Hefei University of Technology.
2. Paper Title: Tullock Contest: A Model of Proof-of-Work Mining in Cryptocurrencies.
Summary: This paper presents a simple N-player Tullock contest with fixed common costs and shared value. The model is reminiscent of a all-pay auction, although the reward assignment mech- anism differs.
Authors: Jorge Soria*
Affiliations: * University of Helsinki.
3. Paper Title: Dealing With Disruption: Emerging Approaches to FinTech Regulation.
Summary: This article examines the emerging approaches to regulating fintech as a distinct market phenomenon.
Authors: Saule T. Omarova*
Affiliations: * Cornell University.
4. Paper Title: The Law of Blockchain.
Summary: The lex cryptographia of blockchain has been designed based on the rational choice assumption of human behavior. The article suggests that this is not a sufficient foundation for the future development of blockchain, and claims that it is necessary to develop a law and political economy framework of blockchain and its regulation through code.
Authors: Georgios Dimitropoulos*
Affiliations: * Hamad Bin Khalifa University.
Conferences & CFPs:
August 3-6 - The 2nd IEEE International Conference on Decentralized Applications and Infrastructures (IEEE DAPPS 2020) (Oxford)
October 21-23 - The second ACM conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT’20) (New York City)
Past Conferences’ Videos:
Jobs:
RFPs:
This newsletter is for informational purposes only. This content does not in any way constitute an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell any investment solution or recommendation to buy or sell a security; nor it is to be taken as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. In fact, none of the information in this or other content on zk Capital should be relied on in any manner as advice. None of the authors, contributors, or anyone else connected with zk Capital, in any way whatsoever, can be responsible for your use of the information contained in this newsletter.