Simple Proofs of Space-Time and Rational Proofs of Storage

We introduce a new cryptographic primitive: Proofs of Space-Time (PoSTs) and construct an extremely simple, practical protocol for implementing these proofs. A PoST allows a prover to convince a verifier that she spent a ``space-time\u27\u27 resource (storing data---space---over a period of time). Formally, we define the PoST resource as a trade-off between CPU work and space-time (under reasonable cost assumptions, a rational user will prefer to use the lower-cost space-time resource over CPU work). Compared to a proof-of-work, a PoST requires less energy use, as the ``difficulty\u27\u27 can be increased by extending the time period over which data is stored without increasing computation costs. Our definition is very similar to ``Proofs of Space\u27\u27 [ePrint 2013/796, 2013/805] but, unlike the previous definitions, takes into account amortization attacks and storage duration. Moreover, our protocol uses a very different (and much simpler) technique, making use of the fact that we explicitly allow a space-time tradeoff, and doesn\u27t require any non-standard assumptions (beyond random oracles). Unlike previous constructions, our protocol allows incremental difficulty adjustment, which can gracefully handle increases in the price of storage compared to CPU work. In addition, we show how, in a cryptocurrency context, the parameters of the scheme can be adjusted using a market-based mechanism, similar in spirit to the difficulty adjustment for PoW protocols

Subquadratic time encodable codes beating the Gilbert-Varshamov bound

We construct explicit algebraic geometry codes built from the Garcia-Stichtenoth function field tower beating the Gilbert-Varshamov bound for alphabet sizes at least 192. Messages are identied with functions in certain Riemann-Roch spaces associated with divisors supported on multiple places. Encoding amounts to evaluating these functions at degree one places. By exploiting algebraic structures particular to the Garcia-Stichtenoth tower, we devise an intricate deterministic \omega/2 < 1.19 runtime exponent encoding and 1+\omega/2 < 2.19 expected runtime exponent randomized (unique and list) decoding algorithms. Here \omega < 2.373 is the matrix multiplication exponent. If \omega = 2, as widely believed, the encoding and decoding runtimes are respectively nearly linear and nearly quadratic. Prior to this work, encoding (resp. decoding) time of code families beating the Gilbert-Varshamov bound were quadratic (resp. cubic) or worse