International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR)
Abstract
Zero-knowledge protocols enable the truth of a mathematical statement to be certified by a verifier without revealing any other information. Such protocols are a cornerstone of modern cryptography and recently are becoming more and more practical. However, a major bottleneck in deployment is the efficiency of the prover and, in particular, the space-efficiency of the protocol.
For every NP relation that can be verified in time T and space S, we construct a public-coin zero-knowledge argument in which the prover runs in time T⋅polylog(T) and space S⋅polylog(T). Our proofs have length polylog(T) and the verifier runs in time T⋅polylog(T) (and space polylog(T)). Our scheme is in the random oracle model and relies on the hardness of discrete log in prime-order groups.
Our main technical contribution is a new space efficient polynomial commitment scheme for multi-linear polynomials. Recall that in such a scheme, a sender commits to a given multi-linear polynomial P:Fn→F so that later on it can prove to a receiver statements of the form P(x)=y . In our scheme, which builds on the commitment schemes of Bootle et al. (Eurocrypt 2016) and Bünz et al. (S&P 2018), we assume that the sender is given multi-pass streaming access to the evaluations of P on the Boolean hypercube and w show how to implement both the sender and receiver in roughly time 2n and space n and with communication complexity roughly n