Browsing by Author "Tani, Antti"

The release of Bitcoin marked the birth of blockchain applications. Due, among other things, to the need for public verifiability, blockchain information is often transparent, which in many cases leads to insufficient privacy. Various methods have been developed to obfuscate the blockchain data, which should at the same time maintain public verifiability. A promising cryptographic approach is zero-knowledge proof that enables a statement to be proved without revealing any other information than the validity of the statement. Zero-knowledge proofs are examined in detail, first focusing on their general properties. With blockchains, the key features for zero-knowledge proof schemes are non-interactivity and succinctness, and schemes that fulfill these requirements are often called as zk-SNARKs. In a limited use, where succinctness is not critical, Fiat-Shamir transform has also been useful. We study the use of zero-knowledge proofs in blockchain applications Zcash, Ethereum and Monero, with a particular focus on privacy and feasibility.