Blog

  • Random Oracles in Cryptography

    31 Oct 2021

    This article describes the role and sources of randomness in cryptographic protocols

  • Cross platform Go modules for giants

    22 Aug 2021

    When your Go modules become too large.

  • StarDrop - anonymous rewards on StarkNet

    14 Jul 2021

    This post is about an experimental project to distribute rewards in a privacy-preserving manner running on StarkNet.

  • PLONK custom gates design considerations

    20 May 2021

    Thanks to Zac Williamson and Kev for explaining ideas that helped form this document. Thanks to Han for spotting a mistake in “Approach 2” of the MiMC custom gate that could lead to breaking soundness.

  • Sapling audit

    31 Jan 2019

    Cross-posting from Medium, where we describe the audit we performed to Zcash Sapling. Check it out here.

  • Exploring Privacy Pass

    05 Jan 2019

    This post explores Privacy Pass, a protocol which “lets users prove their identity across multiple sites anonymously without enabling tracking”. We will go through the protocol components and eventually see a fully-compatible implementation of Privacy Pass in Rust.

  • Creating fake zkSNARK proofs

    16 Jul 2018

    As you may know, zkSNARKs are a way to create Zero-Knowledge Proofs. They do require a trusted setup. What happens when the setup is compromised?

  • Zero-Knowledge taxation on Ethereum

    24 Jun 2018

    At QED‐it, we have a mission to provide privacy preserving systems for the enterprise. For the last two years, we’ve worked on many projects, developing complex SNARK circuits and higher level protocols to tackle different use-cases - asset management, supply chain, real-time risk assessment, predictive maintenance, credit scoring and more.

    We are happy to present one such project that has been done in collaboration with Deloitte. The project has been in the works for the last few months, in which the team in Deloitte utilized the QED‐it SDK to deploy a Zero-Knowledge Blockchain for their chosen use-case — new french tax rules presented in 2018.

  • Cryptocurrency recovery (or "What the BIP is all of this?")

    10 Dec 2017

    Having Bitcoins is nice and having them being stored securely is even nicer. Though, as often is the case, the additional security often invites complexity to frequent use of your money. There are great software and hardware solutions that make your money safer than ever. But it's not always easy to recover.

  • Phishing in the age of preview

    07 Apr 2017

    Link previews are convenient. Implemented inside messaging platforms, they allow you to see the summary of a link a friend sent you without actually opening it, giving you the ability to decide whether it’s important or interesting enough to open it in a browser.

  • Mocking Ethereum contracts

    24 Sep 2016

    Testing frameworks have become important for development processes. They allow us to instrument our code and make sure it handles different cases. Mocking frameworks make it even better - if you have dependencies on external factors, you can make your code believe those dependencies act in a specified way so you can check your code knows how to deal with the different responses. Additionally, as Alex and Roman mentioned in a chat we had, mocks can help you develop when you don’t have the dependency ready, i.e. when someone else develops it and haven’t finished.

  • Additive Homomorphic Encryption on Ethereum

    10 Apr 2016

    A few months ago, the narrative in the cryptocurrency world changed from bitcoin to blockchain. Suddenly, bitcoin is old news and private blockchains are here to change the world. Apparently, blockchain is turning the financial world upside down.

  • Social engineering 101

    05 Apr 2016

    Last Thursday we had our demo day in Boost.VC tribe 7. Excitement, adrenaline and expectations are high - the meetings we’re going to have now, the connections that will assist us in building the companies we are dreaming of.