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

长期以来，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”。尽管两个社区都在处理两个方向的新想法，以及对不当行为的复原力和效率等核心问题，但重点不同和目标性质的不同导致了不同的方法，在术语、模型、定义和整体语言方面存在相当大的差距。这种不匹配在区块链和去中心化分类账(DLT)等新兴技术中更加存在。该项目的创新之处在于：(1)一种专注于密码学和分布式计算的通用区块链语言，并将结果转换为这种通用语言；(2)在更好地捕捉后者的挑战和特点的模型中，研究经典的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。该项目的影响是促成合作，确保以整体办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。对加密难度和去中心化信任假设的研究可以带来一个更灵活、更现实和更安全的网络空间。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中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)创建一个适合表达来自密码学和分布式计算的基础和现代问题的框架，而不忽略隐私或计算考虑，一个被称为分布式密码学的范例，以及用于将经典结果引入该框架并在密码学透镜下进一步扩展它们的理论转换(“编译器”)；(2)在执行模型中和在DLT协议的启发下，研究分布式密码学原语的可行性、可扩展性和效率，例如安全多方计算；以及(3)调查依赖稀疏资源的范例，这在区块链文献中是核心的(例如，工作证明中的散列能力-以及基于桩的协议证明中的利害关系)如何一般性地重塑分布式密码学，并允许我们绕过长期不可能的结果。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.