A brand new zero-knowledge proof (ZK-proof) technology is set to improve the ability to access and verify historical data from the Ethereum blockchain, with deep chain validation cited as a usability barrier of the network.
Technology firm Herodotus has released its on-chain accumulator, which uses storage-proof cryptography, allowing users to verify data from any point of Ethereum’s blockchain without needing a third party. The solution makes use of StarkWare’s STARK proofs, the ZK-proof technology co-invented by mathematician Eli Ben-Sasson.
StarkWare presented Herodotus with a custom-built instance of its shared prover service SHARP, which enables advanced scaling efficiency using recursive proofs. The latter permits a digital machine to present “proofs of proofs” by producing proofs of transactions or blocks in parallel and real-time, batching them right into a subsequent proof.
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At a barely extra technical degree, the accumulator acts as a cache that shops block headers. If the accumulator has a header in its cache, the respective storage-proof computation can use it for validation.
If the header will not be cached, the prover has to generate a proof to cowl the requested block vary, add the block header to the accumulator after which full the requested storage proof computation.
As the title suggests, the on-chain accumulator basically accumulates proofs that rollup prior proofs, drastically lowering the time it takes to verify the Ethereum blockchain and related data at any point in the community’s history.
Herodotus chief expertise officer Marcello Bardus notes that the expertise removes the necessity to traverse your entire blockchain on the blockchain itself:
“We can do it off chain, generate an accumulator and just cherrypick one specific block without iterating from the entire chain on the chain itself.”
StarkWare notes that Storage proofs might show groundbreaking instead to cross-chain bridges that depend on third-party oracles to observe and verify data.
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Herodotus co-founder Kacper Koziol added that the accumulator is an innovation that Ethereum has lengthy wanted to align with blockchain rules of transparency and accessibility. The expertise will basically enable any person to entry any point in Ethereum’s history.
“This will be very powerful. For the first time in the history of blockchains, people are going to be able to prove the correctness of any aspect of anyone’s on-chain information.”
The two groups spotlight the potential for storage proofs to construct “Web2 equivalent applications,” tapping into the pioneering potential to entry and verify Ethereum blockchain data autonomously.
Account restoration is touted as one potential use case, the place the power to verify on-chain data might set off a proverbial lifeless man’s change or automate insurance coverage protocols that use historic on-chain occasions to set off sensible contract payouts.
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