International Association for Cryptologic Research

International Association
for Cryptologic Research

CryptoDB

Hamza Abusalah

Publications

Year
Venue
Title
2023
EUROCRYPT
An Incremental PoSW for General Weight Distributions
Hamza Abusalah Valerio Cini
A proof of sequential work (PoSW) scheme allows the prover to convince a verifier that it computed a certain number of computational steps sequentially. Very recently, graph-labeling PoSW schemes, found applications in light-client blockchain protocols, most notably bootstrapping. A bootstrapping protocol allows a light client, with minimal information about the blockchain, to hold a commitment to its stable prefix. An incremental PoSW (iPoSW) scheme allows the prover to non-trivially increment proofs: given $\chi,\pi_1$ and integers $N_1,N_2$ such that $\pi_1$ is a valid proof for $N_1$, it generates a valid proof $\pi$ for $N_1+N_2$. In this work, we construct an iPoSW scheme based on the skiplist-based PoSW scheme of Abusalah et al. and prove its security in the random oracle model by employing the powerful on-the-fly sampling technique of Döttling et al. Moreover, unlike the iPoSW scheme of Döttling et al., ours is the first iPoSW scheme which is suitable for constructing incremental non-interactive arguments of chain knowledge (SNACK) schemes, which are at the heart of space and time efficient blockchain light-client protocols. In particular, our scheme works for general weight distributions, which we characterize as incrementally sampleable distributions. Our general treatment recovers the distribution underlying the scheme of Döttling et al. as well as the distribution underlying SNACK-enabled bootstrapping application as special cases. In realizing our general construction, we develop a new on-the-fly sampling technique.
2022
ASIACRYPT
SNACKs: Leveraging Proofs of Sequential Work for Blockchain Light Clients 📺
The success of blockchains has led to ever-growing ledgers that are stored by all participating full nodes. In contrast, light clients only store small amounts of blockchain-related data and rely on the mediation of full nodes when interacting with the ledger. A broader adoption of blockchains calls for protocols that make this interaction trustless. We revisit the design of light-client blockchain protocols from the perspective of classical proof-system theory, and explain the role that proofs of sequential work (PoSWs) can play in it. To this end, we define a new primitive called succinct non-interactive argument of chain knowledge (SNACK), a non-interactive proof system that provides clear security guarantees to a verifier (a light client) even when interacting only with a single dishonest prover (a full node). We show how augmenting any blockchain with any graph-labeling PoSW (GL-PoSW) enables SNACK proofs for this blockchain. We also provide a unified and extended definition of GL-PoSWs covering all existing constructions, and describe two new variants. We then show how SNACKs can be used to construct light-client protocols, and highlight some deficiencies of existing designs, along with mitigations. Finally, we introduce incremental SNACKs which could potentially provide a new approach to light mining.
2019
EUROCRYPT
Reversible Proofs of Sequential Work 📺
Proofs of sequential work (PoSW) are proof systems where a prover, upon receiving a statement $$\chi $$ and a time parameter T computes a proof $$\phi (\chi ,T)$$ which is efficiently and publicly verifiable. The proof can be computed in T sequential steps, but not much less, even by a malicious party having large parallelism. A PoSW thus serves as a proof that T units of time have passed since $$\chi $$ was received.PoSW were introduced by Mahmoody, Moran and Vadhan [MMV11], a simple and practical construction was only recently proposed by Cohen and Pietrzak [CP18].In this work we construct a new simple PoSW in the random permutation model which is almost as simple and efficient as [CP18] but conceptually very different. Whereas the structure underlying [CP18] is a hash tree, our construction is based on skip lists and has the interesting property that computing the PoSW is a reversible computation.The fact that the construction is reversible can potentially be used for new applications like constructing proofs of replication. We also show how to “embed” the sloth function of Lenstra and Weselowski [LW17] into our PoSW to get a PoSW where one additionally can verify correctness of the output much more efficiently than recomputing it (though recent constructions of “verifiable delay functions” subsume most of the applications this construction was aiming at).
2017
ASIACRYPT