Collaborative Research: SaTC: CORE: Medium: From Distributed Cryptography to Blockchain and Back

安全的分布式计算一直是密码学和分布式计算/系统研究的共同“游乐场”。尽管新的想法在两个方向和中心问题，如弹性不当行为和效率正在处理的两个社区，在重点和目标属性的差异，导致不同的方法和相当大的差距在术语，模型，定义和整体语言。这种不匹配在区块链和分散式分类账（DLT）等新兴技术中更加明显。该项目的创新之处是：（1）一种用于密码学和分布式计算的通用区块链语言，以及将结果翻译成这种通用语言;（2）研究经典分布式密码学原语和区块链启发的原语的可行性、可扩展性和效率，以更好地捕捉后者的挑战和特质的模型。该项目的影响是形成合作，以确保对上述新兴技术带来的现代挑战采取全面的方法，从而避免可能阻碍这些技术潜力的陷阱。加密硬度和分散信任假设的研究可以导致一个更灵活，但现实和安全的网络空间。该项目将积极推动普渡大学、德克萨斯州A M大学和东北大学的跨学科研究议程，重点关注这些技术，并将积极寻求将该领域代表性不足的群体纳入计算机科学研究。更具体地说，这个项目的目标是通过以下方式解决上述挑战：（1）创建一个框架，该框架适合表达密码学和分布式计算的基础和现代问题，而不忽略隐私或计算方面的考虑，一个称为分布式密码学的范式，以及理论转换（“编译器”）用于将经典结果导入该框架，并在密码学透镜下进一步扩展它们;（2）研究分布式密码原语的可行性、可扩展性和效率，例如安全多方计算，在执行模型中以及在DLT协议启发的假设下;以及（3）研究如何依赖于稀疏资源的范例，这在区块链文献中是核心（例如，工作量证明中的哈希能力-以及基于工作量证明的协议中的权益）通常可以重塑分布式密码学，并使我们能够规避长期存在的不可能结果。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Secure distributed computation has long been a common “playground” for cryptography and distributed computing/systems research. Despite novel ideas flowing in both directions and central questions such as resilience to misbehavior and efficiency being treated by both communities, the difference in focus and the aimed properties have resulted in distinct approaches and considerable gaps in terminology, models, definitions and overall language. This mismatch is ever more present in emerging technologies such as blockchain and decentralized ledgers (DLT). The project’s novelties are: (1) a common blockchain-focused language for cryptography and distributed computing and translations of results to this common language; and (2) the study of feasibility, scalability, and efficiency of both classical distributed-cryptography primitives and blockchain-inspired ones, in models that better capture the challenges and idiosyncrasies of the latter. The project’s impacts are to forment collaborations that will ensure a holistic approach to the modern challenges posed by the above emerging technologies thus avoiding pitfalls that can hinder these technologies’ potential. The study of cryptographic hardness and decentralized trust assumptions can lead to a more flexible yet realistic and secure cyberspace. This project will actively promote an interdisciplinary research agenda focused on these technologies at Purdue, Texas A&M, and Northeastern, and will actively pursue inclusion to computer science research of underrepresented groups in the field. A bit more concretely, the goal of this project is to address the above challenges by (1) creating a framework suitable for expressing foundational and modern questions from both cryptography and distributed computing, without ignoring privacy or computational considerations, a paradigm that is termed distributed cryptography, and theoretical transformations (“compilers”) for importing classical results into this framework, and further extending them under the cryptographic lens; (2) investigating feasibility, scalability, and efficiency of distributed cryptography primitives, such as secure multi-party computation, in models of execution and under assumptions inspired by DLT protocols; and (3) investigate how the paradigm of relying on a sparse resource, which is central in the blockchain literature (e.g., hashing power in proofs of work- and stake in proofs of stake-based protocols) can generically reshape distributed cryptography and allow us to circumvent long-standing impossibility results.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.