Bulletproofs: Short proofs for confidential transactions or more
Details
Agenda:
19:30-20:00 - Gathering
20:00-21:00 - Bulletproofs: Short proofs for confidential transactions or more (Benedikt Bünz)
Bulletproofs are short non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs that require no trusted setup. A bulletproof can be used to convince a verifier that an encrypted plaintext is well formed. For example, prove that an encrypted number is in a given range, without revealing anything else about the number. Compared to SNARKs, Bulletproofs require no trusted setup. However, verifying a bulletproof is more time consuming than verifying a SNARK proof.
Bulletproofs are designed to enable efficient confidential transactions in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Confidential transactions hide the amount that is transfered in the transaction. Every confidential transaction contains a cryptographic proof that the transaction is valid. Bulletproofs shrink the size of the cryptographic proof from over 10kB to less than 1kB. Moreover, bulletproofs support proof aggregation, so that proving that m transaction values are valid adds only O(log(m)) additional elements to the size of a single proof. If all Bitcoin transactions were confidential and used Bulletproofs, then the total size of the UTXO set would be only 17 GB, compared to 160 GB with the currently used proofs.
Bulletproofs have many other applications in cryptographic protocols, such as shortening proofs of solvency, short verifiable shuffles, confidential smart contracts, and as a general drop-in replacement for Sigma-protocols.
The talk will be given in English. It will open with a broadly accessible introduction, but then dive into more technical details. A general knowledge of how blockchains work is expected.
The venue is in Taglit Center, in the TASE building in Ahuzat Bayit 2 Tel Aviv, across the street from the Bitcoin emBassy.
Background links:
Bulletproofs paper (Benedikt Bünz et al) - https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/1066.pdf
SNARKs - https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/zk-snarks-under-the-hood-b33151a013f6
Confidential Transactions - https://elementsproject.org/elements/confidential-transactions/
Event page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/276241209789663/