Author: Andrew Miller 2015-12-02 12:40:43
Published on: 2015-12-02T12:40:43+00:00
The post discusses the use of SNARKs (Succinct Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledge) to increase privacy in Lightning network transactions. The idea is to create a proof that a hash value was computed from a specific input, without revealing the input itself. This can be used to improve privacy in HTLCs (Hash Time-Locked Contracts) for atomic swaps across chains. With each hop in the route, the value of R changes which makes it harder to associate them with the same transaction. A Zcash engineer replicated the experiment from the original post using libsnark and reported efficient results, including key generation time, proof generation time, verification time, proof size, proving key size, verifying key size, and R1CS constraints. However, there are limitations such as the time and computational resources required to generate the proof data and the need for trust in the original random numbers used to generate the verification key. The author cautions that while SNARKs have potential to improve privacy, they are still a new concept and should not be used to protect real money at this time.
Updated on: 2023-05-23T21:32:25.175125+00:00