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

长期以来，安全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”。尽管在两个方向上都有新颖的想法，并且两个社区都在处理诸如对不当行为的弹性和效率等核心问题，但焦点和目标属性的差异导致了不同的方法和术语，模型，定义和整体语言的相当大的差距。这种不匹配在区块链和去中心化账本（DLT）等新兴技术中更为明显。该项目的新颖之处在于：(1)用于密码学和分布式计算的通用区块链语言，并将结果翻译为这种通用语言；(2)研究经典分布式密码学原语和受区块链启发的原语的可行性、可扩展性和效率，在模型中更好地捕捉后者的挑战和特性。该项目的影响是形成合作，以确保采用整体方法应对上述新兴技术带来的现代挑战，从而避免可能阻碍这些技术潜力的陷阱。对加密硬度和去中心化信任假设的研究可以带来更灵活、更现实、更安全的网络空间。该项目将在普渡大学、德克萨斯农工大学和东北大学积极推动以这些技术为重点的跨学科研究议程，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，适合表达来自密码学和分布式计算的基础和现代问题，同时不忽略隐私或计算方面的考虑，一个被称为分布式密码学的范式，以及将经典结果导入该框架的理论转换（“编译器”），并在密码学的镜头下进一步扩展它们；(2)在执行模型和受DLT协议启发的假设下，研究分布式加密原语（如安全多方计算）的可行性、可扩展性和效率；(3)研究依赖稀疏资源的范式，这是区块链文献中的核心（例如，工作证明中的哈希能力-以及基于利益的协议的证明中的利益）如何一般地重塑分布式密码学，并允许我们规避长期不可能的结果。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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.