Tag: Cryptography

  • Coinbase Applied Researcher advances the field of cryptography | by Coinbase | Mar, 2022

    Coinbase Applied Researcher advances the field of cryptography | by Coinbase | Mar, 2022

    [ad_1]

    Coinbase’s Applied Researcher, Yehuda Lindell, has won the prestigious “Test-of-Time” award for 2022 from the International Association of Cryptologic Research (IACR). The “Test-of-Time” award recognizes papers published 15 years ago that have had a lasting impact on the field of cryptography. Yehuda’s pioneering work was published a year before another important paper you may be familiar with: “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”.

    His 2007 paper, “An Efficient Protocol for Secure Two-Party Computation in the Presence of Malicious Adversaries,” was the first to outline a two-party multi-party computation (MPC) protocol that was efficient enough to be implemented. In layman’s terms, secure two-party computation allows two “people” to solve a problem while keeping critical information private. For example, it solves the classic millionaires’ problem by allowing two people to understand who has more money without revealing their respective net worths. Yehuda’s work laid the foundation for future practical constructions.

    Why cryptography is critical

    Beyond their shared etymology related to something “hidden” or “secret”, cryptocurrency and cryptography are very intertwined. Cryptography’s mathematical and technological innovations underpin the entire crypto industry. The Bitcoin white paper makes this clear by introducing a cryptographic protocol in place of a trusted third party to validate transactions. This shift makes decentralization possible by “allowing any two willing parties to transact directly.”

    Cryptography is essential to enabling transactions that are anonymous, secure, and “trustless.” The final point is the least obvious and perhaps most important. You don’t need a bank, credit card company, government, or other third-party intermediary since cryptographic tools such as public-private key encryption provide secure, direct confirmation.

    Coinbase invests in fundamental research

    Coinbase cares deeply about the security and reliability of our systems and the crypto industry as a whole. Investing in fundamental research is a core part of our mission to increase economic freedom in the world. We are honored to have Yehuda on our team and to support research that advances our mission.

    If you feel strongly about advancing the field of cryptography, come work with us.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Meet Kryptology: Coinbase’s Open Source Cryptography Library

    Meet Kryptology: Coinbase’s Open Source Cryptography Library

    [ad_1]

    We’re excited to announce the open sourcing of Kryptology. Kryptology is a cryptographic library for the Crypto community that will enable and empower developers to create novel crypto innovations with state-of-the-art cryptography.

    At Coinbase, cryptography is a first-class citizen. We’re passionate about cryptography as a driver for innovation in crypto. It is the most important mechanism for delivering delightful user experiences, and it enables privacy solutions that will change the security paradigm.

    Why do we believe this?

    Crypto is founded on cryptographic innovation. As described in Bitcoin’s academic pedigree, Bitcoin used existing, but not-yet-production, academic cryptography (hashcash, Chaum’s E-cash, Merkle trees) with economic game-theory to solve the Byzantine Generals problem.

    Crypto changes cryptography. The feedback loop is running at warp speed. Cryptographers created private transactions with zero-knowledge techniques in ZCash, The Internet Computer is built on new cryptographic breakthroughs, Monero uses ring signatures to gain confidentiality, skale is using BLS to create roll-ups to improve scale and reduce storage on-chain, and Mina and ZCash use Halo 2 and Pasta.

    Coinbase also strives to bring near-future cryptography into production. zkSNARKS and Cryptographic Accumulators, FROST, and Threshold Signing.

    While enabling further innovation is our primary goal, we also aim for Kryptology to elevate the standard for what is considered to be a robust, usable cryptographic library. The library provides developers with a toolbox of secure, audited, and easy-to-use APIs. Kryptology is designed to be misuse-resistant (i.e., “hard to screw up”), so developers can focus on what they do best. We hope this translates to more projects that build and grow the crypto ecosystem.

    A guide to Kryptology, including full documentation, can be found in the repository. This includes common development issues and lessons learned from our years of experience with cryptographic implementations. We hope these learnings will be uniquely valuable for others that want to support developers and build great user experiences. Over time, our goal is to support a thriving ecosystem of new and working cryptography for many more applications. Check out our open source guidelines or get started here.

    If you are interested in cutting-edge cryptography, Coinbase is hiring!


    Meet Kryptology: Coinbase’s Open Source Cryptography Library was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

    [ad_2]

    Source link