Elliptic Curve Accelerator for zkSNARKs
From iis-projects
Short Description
A Zero Knowledge Proof allows one entity (the prover) to prove a statement to another party without revealing the secrets this statement is based upon. It is believed that such systems will enable a lot of new systems and protocols. One such example is ZCash: ZCash is a cryptocurrency that uses Zero Knowledge Proofs (zkSNARKs) to keep the users privacy protected. A shielded ZCash transaction does neither reveal the amount transfered nor the participating parties. However, creating a zkSNARK requires a lot of computational power and energy and software implementations take 10s of seconds on a current processors, therefore, ZCash is infeasible for constrained mobile devices and hardware wallets.
Creating a zkSNARK involves more than 10'000 elliptic curve operations on a specific pairing friendly curve. In this project you would investigate the feasibility of a hardware accelerator for the specific elliptic curve of ZCash.
Status: Available
- Looking for 1-2 Semester/Master students
- Contact: Moritz Schneider
Prerequisites
- VLSI I
- VLSI II (recommended)
- Experience with elliptic curve cryptography and their implementations
Character
- 50% Theory
- 50% Digital Design
