Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Development & Technical Discussion => Topic started by: danda on November 07, 2023, 07:49:36 PM



Title: Mutator Sets: new approach to Decentralized Scalable Privacy
Post by: danda on November 07, 2023, 07:49:36 PM
If anyone here that's interested in privacy and scalability has time to watch this talk or read the paper, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts about this approach.

  • Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjh1PxrgwQo
  • Blog post: https://neptune.cash/blog/mutator-sets/
  • Paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1208.pdf

Description from youtube:

Quote
Mutator sets are a solution to the problem of scalable privacy in blockchains.

A mutator set is a cryptographically authenticated data structure that allows for removal and insertion with logarithmic complexity in the number of entries.

In this talk Alan Szepieniec explains *why* a new data structure is needed to build a scalable, privacy-preserving blockchain, and *how* this new data structure works. He also describes the scalability problem that existing privacy-preserving blockchains have run into and the thought process that lead to the design of the mutator set.

Alan Szepieniec has a ph.d. in post-quantum cryptography from KU Leuven and is co-founder of the Neptune Cash blockchain which aims to bring mutator sets into real-world use to deliver a blockchain that achieves scalability, privacy, post-quantum security, and brings ZK-STARKs to layer 1.

Presented at Hackers Congress Paralelní Polis 23.




Title: Re: Mutator Sets: new approach to Decentralized Scalable Privacy
Post by: Sword Smith on November 07, 2023, 11:53:34 PM
If anyone here that's interested in privacy and scalability has time to watch this talk or read the paper, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts about this approach.

  • Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjh1PxrgwQo
  • Blog post: https://neptune.cash/blog/mutator-sets/
  • Paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1208.pdf

Co-author here. I believe Peter Todd suggested to include an MMR of the UTXO set in the Bitcoin block header? This data structure does something very similar but adds privacy by cryptographically hiding the link between removals and additions to the mutator set.