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Articles by Dan Boneh
Can AI Actually Break Cryptography? Experts Weigh In On the FUD
with Dan Boneh, Eddy Lazzarin, Justin Thaler and Liz Harkavy AI is getting better at solving hard math problems. But what does that mean for the cryptography protecting everything from banking and private messages to crypto wallets and more? We bring together expert cryptographers from Stanford and a16z crypto to make sense of the recent warnings sounded on social media, partly sparked by OpenAI’s drop of recent math results.
Dan Boneh | Coincu
Menu NewsCoinsMarketsFlash NewsLearnLawsPredictionsAboutResourcesReviewsDirectory Israeli–American professor Known for: Israeli–American professor in applied cryptography and computer security at Stanford University Nationality: American Crypto RegulationCryptography & Security Biography Dan Boneh is an Israeli–American professor in applied cryptography and computer security at Stanford University. Frequently Asked Questions Who is Dan Boneh?
Cryptography and Computer Security
. . Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology . . . . . . . KEY TAKEAWAYS • Cryptography is essential for protecting information, but alone it cannot secure cyberspace against all threats; it must operate in concert with the broader field of computer security. • Cryptography is the enabling technology of blockchain, which is the enabling technology of cryptocurrencies.
We Can’t Regulate Our Way to Crypto Leadership. We Still Need Science Original
The following open letter was written by Dan Boneh (Stanford), Joseph Bonneau (NYU), Giulia Fanti (Carnegie Mellon), Ben Fisch (Yale), Ari Juels (Cornell), Farinaz Koushanfar (U.C. San Diego), Andrew Miller (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign), Ciamac Moallemi (Columbia), David Tse (Stanford), Pramod Viswanath (Princeton). Here’s a multiple choice question. Algorand, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Axelar, Babylon, Cardano, Cosmos, Eigenlayer, Espresso, Flashbots, Oasis, Starkware, Sui.
Quantum computing: What, when, where, how
This episode is all about quantum computing — what it is, how it works, what’s hype vs. reality, and how to prepare for it/ what builders should do. Specifically, we cover: What quantum computing is and isn’t, and what people are really talking about when they worry about a quantum computer that can break cryptographic systems that are not secure against quantum attacks.
A few of the things we’re excited about in crypto (2025)
Editor’s note: a16z released its omnibus list of “big ideas” tech builders may tackle in the year ahead, according to partners across AI, American Dynamism, bio/ health, crypto, enterprise, fintech, games, infrastructure, and other areas. Below is a shortlist of some of the things that excite our various a16z crypto partners about what’s ahead. And for a 2025 outlook on policy, regulation, and more, check out this November 2024 post.
How Tech Advances in Blockchains Benefit Other Industries
with Dan Boneh @tim_roughgarden @smc90 In this special 50th episode of the web3 with a16z podcast, we discuss how work in the blockchains/ crypto space has led to advances in several important technologies — which can be (and are being) used by many other industries beyond crypto.
Traceable Secret Sharing: Strong Security and Efficient Constructions
Paper 2024/405 , Stanford University , Stanford University , Stanford University Abstract Suppose Alice uses a $t$-out-of-$n$ secret sharing to store her secret key on $n$ servers. Her secret key is protected as long as $t$ of them do not collude. However, what if a less-than-$t$ subset of the servers decides to offer the shares they have for sale? In this case, Alice should be able to hold them accountable, or else nothing prevents them from selling her shares.
Exponent-VRFs and Their Applications
Paper 2024/397 , Stanford University , Coinbase and Tel-Aviv University , Coinbase Verifiable random functions (VRFs) are pseudorandom functions with the addition that the function owner can prove that a generated output is correct, with respect to a committed key.
LatticeFold: A Lattice-based Folding Scheme and its Applications to Succinct Proof Systems
Paper 2024/257 , Stanford University , Stanford University Folding is a recent technique for building efficient recursive SNARKs. Several elegant folding protocols have been proposed, such as Nova, Supernova, Hypernova, Protostar, and others. However, all of them rely on an additively homomorphic commitment scheme based on discrete log, and are therefore not post-quantum secure. In this work we present LatticeFold, the first lattice-based folding protocol based on the Module SIS problem.
zkPi: Proving Lean Theorems in Zero-Knowledge
Paper 2024/267 , Stanford University , Stanford University , Stanford University Abstract Interactive theorem provers (ITPs), such as Lean and Coq, can express formal proofs for a large category of theorems, from abstract math to software correctness. Consider Alice who has a Lean proof for some public statement $T$. Alice wants to convince the world that she has such a proof, without revealing the actual proof.
[2312.14375] R-Pool and Settlement Markets for Recoverable ERC-20R Tokens
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.
Vector Commitments with Efficient Updates
Paper 2023/1830 , Stanford University , Stanford University Dynamic vector commitments that enable local updates of opening proofs have applications ranging from verifiable databases with membership changes to stateless clients on blockchains. In these applications, each user maintains a relevant subset of the committed messages and the corresponding opening proofs with the goal of ensuring a succinct global state.
Accountable Multi-Signatures with Constant Size Public Keys
Paper 2023/1793 , Stanford University , Stanford University , The University of Texas at Austin, NTT Research A multisignature scheme is used to aggregate signatures by multiple parties on a common message $m$ into a single short signature on $m$. Multisignatures are used widely in practice, most notably, in proof-of-stake consensus protocols.
Traitor Tracing for Threshold Decryption
Paper 2023/1724 , Stanford University , Stanford University , Stanford University Abstract In a traitor tracing system there are $n$ parties and each party holds a secret key. A broadcaster uses an encryption key to encrypt a message $m$ to a ciphertext $c$ so that every party can decrypt~$c$ using its secret key and obtain $m$. Suppose a subset of parties ${\cal J} \subseteq [n]$ combine their secret keys to create a pirate decoder $D(\cdot)$ that can decrypt ciphertexts from the broadcaster.
AI x Crypto on Apple Podcasts
with @alive_eth @danboneh @smc90 The convergence of two important, very top-of-mind trends: artificial intelligence & blockchains/ crypto. The conversation covers everything from deep fakes and bots and proof-of-humanity in a world of AI, to big data, LLMs like ChatGPT, user control, governance, privacy and security, zero-knowledge machine learning, MEV, media and generative art, and and much, much more.
Post-Quantum Single Secret Leader Election (SSLE) From Publicly Re-randomizable Commitments
Paper 2023/1241 , Stanford University , Stanford University , Stanford University A Single Secret Leader Election (SSLE) enables a group of parties to randomly choose exactly one leader from the group with the restriction that the identity of the leader will be known to the chosen leader and nobody else. At a later time, the elected leader should be able to publicly reveal her identity and prove that she is the elected leader.
AI x crypto - a16z crypto
FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW with @alive_eth @danboneh @smc90 This week’s all-new episode covers the convergence of two important, very top-of-mind trends: AI (artificial intelligence) & blockchains/ crypto. These domains together have major implications for how we all live our lives everyday; so this episode is for anyone just curious about, or already building in the space.
[2307.04085] Vector Commitments with Efficient Updates
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.
Arithmetic Sketching
Paper 2023/1012 Arithmetic Sketching , Stanford University , Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Ben-Gurion University of the Negev , Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Abstract This paper introduces arithmetic sketching, an abstraction of a primitive that several previous works use to achieve lightweight, low-communication zero-knowledge verification of secret-shared vectors.
Revisiting the Nova Proof System on a Cycle of Curves
Paper 2023/969 Revisiting the Nova Proof System on a Cycle of Curves , Stanford University , Stanford University , Microsoft Research Abstract Nova is an efficient recursive proof system built from an elegant folding scheme for (relaxed) R1CS statements. The original Nova paper (CRYPTO'22) presented Nova using a single elliptic curve group of order $p$. However, for improved efficiency, the implementation of Nova alters the scheme to use a 2-cycle of elliptic curves.
Of data availability & danksharding
Valeria NikolaenkoDan BonehRobert Hackett cryptography danksharding data availability Ethereum research scaling & throughput Robert: Hi everyone, Robert Hackett back here again with another episode for web3 with a16z. I recently chatted live with some of our researchers on the topic of Data Availability Sampling and Danksharding – which is relevant to blockchain scaling, as well as paving the way for more advanced blockchain networks & user applications.
Data availability sampling and danksharding: An overview and a proposal for improvements
Danksharding is an approach to scaling the amount of data on chain for a future version of Ethereum. The goal of this upgrade is to ensure that the data on chain was made available to archiving parties when it was first posted. It does so using a technique called Data Availability Sampling, or simply DAS. In this post we survey how data availability in danksharding works and propose some modifications to the underlying technique.
Data availability sampling and danksharding: An overview and a proposal for improvements
Danksharding is an approach to scaling the amount of data on chain for a future version of Ethereum. The goal of this upgrade is to ensure that the data on chain was made available to archiving parties when it was first posted. It does so using a technique called Data Availability Sampling, or simply DAS. In this post we survey how data availability in danksharding works and propose some modifications to the underlying technique.
Lightweight Techniques for Private Heavy Hitters
Paper 2021/017 Lightweight Techniques for Private Heavy Hitters Abstract This paper presents Poplar, a new system for solving the private heavy-hitters problem. In this problem, there are many clients and a small set of data-collection servers. Each client holds a private bitstring. The servers want to recover the set of all popular strings, without learning anything else about any client’s string.
Papers from EUROCRYPT 2023
Papers from EUROCRYPT 2023 Year Venue Title 2023 EUROCRYPT A Direct Key Recovery Attack on SIDH Abstract We present an attack on SIDH utilising isogenies between polarized products of two supersingular elliptic curves. In the case of arbitrary starting curve, our attack (discovered independently from [8]) has subexponential complexity, thus significantly reducing the security of SIDH and SIKE.
A Lower Bound on the Length of Signatures Based on Group Actions and Generic Isogenies
Paper 2023/250 A Lower Bound on the Length of Signatures Based on Group Actions and Generic Isogenies , Stanford University , Princeton University , NTT Research, Inc., Princeton University Abstract We give the first black box lower bound for signature protocols that can be described as group actions, which include many based on isogenies.
Threshold Signatures with Private Accountability
Paper 2022/1636 Threshold Signatures with Private Accountability , Stanford University , University of Waterloo Abstract Existing threshold signature schemes come in two flavors: (i) fully private, where the signature reveals nothing about the set of signers that generated the signature, and (ii) accountable, where the signature completely identifies the set of signers. In this paper we propose a new type of threshold signature, called TAPS, that is a hybrid of privacy and accountability.
Clarion: Anonymous Communication from Multiparty Shuffling Protocols
Paper 2021/1514 Clarion: Anonymous Communication from Multiparty Shuffling Protocols , UNC Chapel Hill , Stanford University Abstract This paper studies the role of multiparty shuffling protocols in enabling more efficient metadata-hiding communication.
Powers-of-Tau to the People: Decentralizing Setup Ceremonies
Paper 2022/1592 Powers-of-Tau to the People: Decentralizing Setup Ceremonies , Andreesen-Horowitz - a16z crypto research , Andreesen-Horowitz - a16z crypto research , Andreesen-Horowitz - a16z crypto research, New York University , Stanford University Abstract We introduce the first decentralized trusted setup protocols for constructing a powers-of-tau structured reference string.
Achieving Crypto Privacy and Regulatory Compliance
Editor’s note: Below is a shorter summary of the paper “Privacy-Protecting Regulatory Solutions Using Zero-Knowledge Proofs” in blog post form. Download the full paper, or read the text here. The development and regulation of web3 – an evolution of the internet powered by crypto – must achieve two goals that are often in tension. Goal 1: Preserve consumer privacy, despite the default transparent nature of blockchains. Goal 2: Reduce the risk of illicit finance in the interest of national security.
Privacy-Protecting Regulatory Solutions Using Zero-Knowledge Proofs: Full Paper
Editor’s note: Below is the full text of the paper “Privacy-Protecting Regulatory Solutions Using Zero-Knowledge Proofs”. Download the PDF, or read the shorter summary blog post here. Introduction Of all the utility that programmable blockchains offer – security, predictability, interoperability, and autonomous economies, among others – as of today, the most widely used blockchains do not offer privacy. This remains a key impediment to their widespread adoption.
HyperPlonk: Plonk with Linear-Time Prover and High-Degree Custom Gates
Paper 2022/1355 HyperPlonk: Plonk with Linear-Time Prover and High-Degree Custom Gates , Espresso Systems , Espresso Systems, Stanford University , Stanford University , Espresso Systems Abstract Plonk is a widely used succinct non-interactive proof system that uses univariate polynomial commitments. Plonk is quite flexible: it supports circuits with low-degree ``custom'' gates as well as circuits with lookup gates (a lookup gate ensures that its input is contained in a predefined table).
Using ZK Proofs to Fight Disinformation
Verifying where and when a digital image was taken has become increasingly difficult. Image provenance is especially concerning in the realm of news media. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February, several photographs and videos circulated online that falsely claimed to show the conflict. One illustrative example is this alleged side-by-side comparison of two photos; the first purportedly shows Syria after Russian air bombings, and the second supposedly shows Ukraine after the Russian invasion.
[2208.02999] Cryptoeconomic Security for Data Availability Committees
[Submitted on 5 Aug 2022 ( v1 ), last revised 20 Jun 2023 (this version, v3)] Title:Cryptoeconomic Security for Data Availability Committees Download a PDF of the paper titled Cryptoeconomic Security for Data Availability Committees, by Ertem Nusret Tas and Dan Boneh Download PDF Abstract: Layer 2 systems have received increasing attention due to their potential to scale the throughput of L1 blockchains.
Zero-Knowledge Proofs on Secret-Shared Data via Fully Linear PCPs
Paper 2019/188 Zero-Knowledge Proofs on Secret-Shared Data via Fully Linear PCPs Abstract We introduce and study the notion of fully linear probabilistically checkable proof systems. In such a proof system, the verifier can make a small number of linear queries that apply jointly to the input and a proof vector.
Experimenting with Collaborative zk-SNARKs: Zero-Knowledge Proofs for Distributed Secrets
Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2021/1530 Experimenting with Collaborative zk-SNARKs: Zero-Knowledge Proofs for Distributed Secrets Alex Ozdemir and Dan Boneh Abstract: A zk-SNARK is a powerful cryptographic primitive that provides a succinct and efficiently checkable argument that the prover has a witness to a public NP statement, without revealing the witness. However, in their native form, zk-SNARKs only apply to a secret witness held by a single party.
Crypto, an Oral Essay
This is a special episode of the a16z podcast — it’s an audio history, told through the voices of the a16z crypto team, about what crypto is, how it really works, and why it matters. This “innovation overview” is meant as a resource, and it features hallway-style conversations with the a16z team as well as outside experts. In brief segments, we’ll take you from the ground up — from the basics, to the most current developments, and beyond that to a look at what we might see in the future.
Technical Perspective: Attacking Cryptographic Key Exchange with Precomputation
By Dan Boneh Communications of the ACM, January 2019, Vol. 62 No. 1, Page 105 10.1145/3292033 Comments View as: Print Mobile App ACM Digital Library In the Digital Edition Share: Send by email Share on reddit Share on StumbleUpon Share on Tweeter Share on Facebook The Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol is at the heart of many cryptographic protocols widely used on the Internet. It is used for session setup in HTTPS (TLS), in SSH, in IPsec, and others.
AdVersarial: Perceptual Ad Blocking meets Adversarial Machine Learning
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.
Stanford Blockchain Conference 2019
This conference will explore the use of formal methods, empirical analysis, and risk modeling to better understand security and systemic risk in blockchain protocols. We aim to foster multidisciplinary collaboration among practitioners and researchers in blockchain protocols, distributed systems, cryptography, computer security, and risk management. The talks and papers from the previous event in this conference series (formerly known as BPASE) are available here: 2017; 2018.
Op-ed: Ray Ozzie’s crypto proposal-a dose of technical reality
In this op-ed, a group of noted security researchers take aim at Ray Ozzie's plan to grant law enforcement access to encrypted devices—and to do so securely. The views here do not necessarily represent those of Ars Technica. In the debate over law enforcement access to encrypted devices, technical details matter. The rhetoric has been stark and, dismayingly often, divorced from technical reality.
Deriving genomic diagnoses without revealing patient genomes
Download and print this article for your personal scholarly, research, and educational use. Buy a single issue of Science for just $15 USD.
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