CS Faculty Receive Google Support for Research on Zero-Knowledge Proofs

View from below of Healy Hall Clock Tower - side filled with Cherry Blossoms

Professors Nissim, Thaler and Venkitasubramaniam have received support from Google for their work on zero-Knowledge proofs.

Zero-knowledge proof (ZK) is a powerful cryptographic primitive that allows one entity referred to as the Prover to convince another entity referred to as the Verifier of the validity of some mathematical statement while revealing nothing beyond its validity. Succinct non-interactive zero-knowledge arguments of knowledge (zk-SNARKs) are variants of ZK that offer attractive features such as very short proofs and very efficient verification. zk-SNARKs have been the focus of intense research from both theory and practice in the past decade and are becoming an indispensable tool for both privacy and scalability in blockchains. This project will explore the limits of designing zk-SNARKs by understanding space complexity, composition, and the interplay of ZK with differential privacy.