Blockchains are a new settlement and ownership layer, one that’s programmable, open, and global by default, unlocking new forms of entrepreneurship, creativity, and infrastructure. Growth in monthly active crypto addresses is generally tracking the
Prediction markets are a hot topic again — even cartoon characters are talking about them (cf South Park). But beyond the buzz, what is a prediction market, exactly? How do they work, how are they designed, and what makes them work?
We answer all
Yevgeniy Dodis (NYU and IACR) considers the problem of building a private blockchain on top of a public one. Users of the private blockchain would not not need to build expensive consensus protocol but would still maintain privacy. This object requires a novel encryption scheme called perpetual encryption (PE), which is a new primitive of independent interest.
PE schemes support dynamically changing keys in a way that ciphertext epoch can be efficiently decrypted using any future key while appearing random even given all past keys. Yevgeniy also shows how to build an efficient PE from any public-key encryption, hashing and other standard symmetric primitives.
About the presenter:
Yevgeniy is a Fellow of the IACR (International Association for Cryptologic Research), and a Professor of Computer Science at New York University. His research is primarily in cryptography and network security. Some of his work on Random Number Generation, Hash Functions and Secure Messaging has had real-world impact for Zoom, Microsoft, Apple and Signal, among others. He is the recipient of 2021 and 2019 IACR Test-of-Time Awards for his work on Fuzzy Extractors and Verifiable Random Functions, National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Faculty Awards from Facebook, Google, IBM, Algorand, Protocol Labs, JP Morgan, Stellar Foundation, Sui Foundation and VMware.
About a16z crypto research:
a16z crypto research is a multidisciplinary lab that works closely with our portfolio companies and others toward solving the important problems in the space, and toward advancing the science and technology of the next generation of the internet.
More about us:
a16z.com/2022/04/21/announcing-a16z-crypto-research More from the a16z crypto team – Subscribe to our ‘web3 weekly newsletter’: a16zcrypto.substack.com – Listen to our ‘web3 with a16z’ podcast: a16zcrypto.com/web3-with-a16z-podcast/ – Read more of our work: a16zcrypto.com
