## CryptoDB

### Matteo Campanelli

#### Publications

Year
Venue
Title
2022
PKC
We advance the state-of-the art for zero-knowledge commit-and-prove SNARKs (CP-SNARKs). CP-SNARKs are an important class of SNARKs which, using commitments as glue'', allow to efficiently combine proof systems---e.g., general-purpose SNARKs (an efficient way to prove statements about circuits) and $\Sigma$-protocols (an efficient way to prove statements about group operations). Thus, CP-SNARKs allow to efficiently provide zero-knowledge proofs for composite statements such as $h=H(g^{x})$ for some hash-function $H$. Our main contribution is providing the first construction of CP-SNARKs where the proof size is succinct in the number of commitments. We achieve our result by providing a general technique to compile Algebraic Holographic Proofs (AHP) (an underlying abstraction used in many modern SNARKs) with special decomposition'' properties into an efficient CP-SNARK. We then show that some of the most efficient AHP constructions---Marlin, PLONK, and Sonic---satisfy our compilation requirements. Our resulting SNARKs achieve universal and updatable reference strings, which are highly desirable features as they greatly reduce the trust needed in the SNARK setup phase.
2021
ASIACRYPT
We study how to construct zkSNARKs whose SRS is universal and updatable, i.e., valid for all relations within a size-bound and to which a dynamic set of participants can indefinitely add secret randomness. Our focus is: efficient universal updatable zkSNARKs with linear-size SRS and their commit-and-prove variants. We both introduce new formal frameworks and techniques, as well as systematize existing ones. We achieve a collection of zkSNARKs with different tradeoffs. One of our schemes achieves the smallest proof size and proving time compared to the state of art for proofs for arithmetic circuits. The language supported by this scheme is a variant of R1CS that we introduce, called R1CS-lite. Another of our constructions directly supports standard R1CS and achieves the fastest proving time for this type of constraints. These results stem from different contributions: (1) a new algebraically-flavored variant of IOPs that we call Polynomial Holographic IOPs (PHPs); (2) a new compiler that combines our PHPs with commit-and-prove zk-SNARKs (CP-SNARKs) for committed polynomials; (3) pairing-based realizations of these CP-SNARKs for polynomials; (4) constructions of PHPs for R1CS and R1CS-lite. Finally, we extend the compiler in item (2) to yield commit-and-prove universal zkSNARKs.
2020
ASIACRYPT
Vector commitments with subvector openings (SVC) [Lai-Malavolta, Boneh-Bunz-Fisch; CRYPTO'19] allow one to open a committed vector at a set of positions with an opening of size independent of both the vector's length and the number of opened positions. We continue the study of SVC with two goals in mind: improving their efficiency and making them more suitable to decentralized settings. We address both problems by proposing a new notion for VC that we call \emph{incremental aggregation} and that allows one to merge openings in a succinct way an \emph{unbounded} number of times. We show two applications of this property. The first one is immediate and is a method to generate openings in a distributed way. The second application is an algorithm for faster generation of openings via preprocessing. We then proceed to realize SVC with incremental aggregation. We provide two constructions in groups of unknown order that, similarly to that of Boneh et al. (which supports aggregating only once), have constant-size public parameters, commitments and openings. As an additional feature, for the first construction we propose efficient arguments of knowledge of subvector openings which immediately yields a keyless proof of storage with compact proofs. Finally, we address a problem closely related to that of SVC: storing a file efficiently in completely decentralized networks. We introduce and construct \emph{verifiable decentralized storage} (VDS), a cryptographic primitive that allows to check the integrity of a file stored by a network of nodes in a distributed and decentralized way. Our VDS constructions rely on our new vector commitment techniques.
2018
TCC
This paper initiates a study of Fine Grained Secure Computation: i.e. the construction of secure computation primitives against “moderately complex” adversaries. We present definitions and constructions for compact Fully Homomorphic Encryption and Verifiable Computation secure against (non-uniform) $\mathsf {NC}^1$ adversaries. Our results do not require the existence of one-way functions and hold under a widely believed separation assumption, namely $\mathsf {NC}^{1}\subsetneq \oplus \mathsf {L}/ {\mathsf {poly}}$ . We also present two application scenarios for our model: (i) hardware chips that prove their own correctness, and (ii) protocols against rational adversaries potentially relevant to the Verifier’s Dilemma in smart-contracts transactions such as Ethereum.