VDF Research Effort
Hello,
This is a collaborative effort to design and implement efficient VDF in software and in hardware, to make VDFs secure and usable in real systems.
What are VDFs?
Verifiable Delay Functions take a prescribed time to
compute, even on a parallel computer, yet produce a unique output that can be efficiently and publicly verified.
Why do we need them?
VDFs have a wide variety of decentralized systems: public randomness beacons, leader election in consensus protocols, and proofs of
replication.
Can we use them today?
Efficient VDF constructions exist today and can be implemented. However, if malicious actors have access to specialized hardware they can speed up their evaluation, breaking the security of the protocols that rely on VDFs :(
So, what's next?
Ethereum Foundation, Protocol Labs, academic institutions and other collaborators are working towards designing and open-sourcing the fastest VDF hardware :)
- Collaboration: We are open to collaborate with academic institutions, manufacturers that can help improving our constructions and projects that want to participate in this effort.
- VDF Competition: We are organizing a competition to research the fastest VDF construction, get your maths and circuit optimization ready! TBA
Stay tuned or reach out vdf (at) ethereum.org
VDF papers
2019—Mahmoody, Smith, Wu A Note on the (Im)possibility of Verifiable Delay Functions in the Random Oracle Model
2019—Döttling, Garg, Malavolta, Vasudevan Tight Verifiable Delay Functions
2019—Ephraim, Freitag, Komargodski, Pass Continuous Verifiable Delay Functions
2019—De Feo, Masson, Petit, Sanso Verifiable delay functions from supersingular isogenies and pairings
2018 (30 July)—Boneh, Bünz, Fisch A Survey of Two Verifiable Delay Functions
2018 (22 June)—Pietrzak Simple Verifiable Delay Functions
2018 (20 June)—Wesolowski Efficient Verifiable Delay Functions
2018 (12 June)—Boneh, Bonneau, Bünz, Fisch Verifiable Delay Functions
2015—Lenstra, Wesolowski A Random Zoo: Sloth, Unicorn, and Trx
Non-VDF proofs of exponentiations
2020—Wahby, Boneh, Jeffrey, Poon An airdrop that preserves recipient privacy
2020—Campanelli, Fiore, Greco, Kolonelos, Nizzardo Vector Commitment Techniques and Applications to Verifiable Decentralized Storage
2019—Ozdemir, Wahby, Boneh Scaling Verifiable Computation Using Efficient Set Accumulators
2019—Bünz, Fisch, Szepieniec Transparent SNARKs from DARK Compilers
2018—Boneh, Bünz, Fisch Batching Techniques for Accumulators with Applications to IOPs and Stateless Blockchains
2018—Lai, Malavolta Subvector Commitments with Application to Succinct Arguments
Randomness beacons
2018 (26 September)—Drake Minimal VDF Randomness Beacon
2018 (16 July)—Drake VDF-based RNG with Linear Lookahead
2018 (8 June)—Jensen, Kristensen, Michno Developing a Trustworthy Randomness Beacon for the Public
2017—Bünz, Goldfeder, Bonneau Proofs-of-delay and Randomness Beacons in Ethereum
2016—Darknet RANDAO: A DAO Working as RNG of Ethereum
1998—Goldschlag, Stubblebine Publicly Veriable Lotteries: Applications of Delaying Functions
Other relevant reading
2019—Öztürk Modular Multiplication Algorithm Suitable For Low-Latency Circuit Implementations
2018 (21 July)—Buterin STARKs, Part 3: Into the Weeds
2018 (9 Feb)—Cohen, Pietrzak Simple Proofs of Sequential Work
2014—Gnos1s RSA UFO
2013—Mahmoody, Moran, Vadhan Publicly Verifiable Proofs of Sequential Work
2001—Buchmann, Hamdy A Survey on IQ Cryptography
2000—Boneh, Naor Timed Commitments
1999—Sander Efficient Accumulators without Trapdoor Extended Abstract
1996—Rivest, Shamir, Wagner Time-lock Puzzles and Timed-release Crypto
Explainers, articles, podcasts
2019—Joseph Bonneau (podcast) Exploring VDFs
2019—Justin Drake (podcast) Randomness and Random Beacons
2019—Bruno Skvorc Two Point Oh: Randomness
2019—Maxwell Foley Qi Hardware—VDF FAQ pt. 1
Oct 2018—Arthur Breitman Better randomness
Oct 2018—Trail of Bits Introduction to Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs)
Sep 2018—Justin Drake Minimal VDF randomness beacon
Aug 2018—Jeromy Johnson A VDF Explainer
Jul 2018—Danny Ryan VDFs are not Proof of Work
Apr 2018—Anatoly Yakovenko Proof of History: A clock for blockchain
Videos
2019—Benjamin Wesolowski Efficient Verifiable Delay Functions
2019—Dankrad Feist VDF Applications
2019—Ron Rivest Comments and Observations about Timelocks and VDFs
2019—Justin Drake Blockchain VDF Ecosystem and Opportunities for Participation
2019—Erdinc Ozturk Novel Low-Latency Modular Multiplier
2019—Mariano Sorgente Proof of Space Nakamoto Consensus using Classgroup VDFs
2019—Muthu Venkitasubramaniam RSA Multi-party Computation Protocol Overview
2019—Dan Boneh Verifiable Delay Functions
2019—Jeromy Johnson VDFs and Filecoin
2019—Justin Drake Towards Productions VDFs
2019—Benjamin Wesolowski A Hybrid VDF prover
2019—Erdinc Ozturk Low Latency Modular Multiplication
2019—Abhi Shelat Threshold Factoring from Factoring
2018—Ben Fisch Verifiable Delay Functions: Applications and Candidate Constructions
2017—Benedikt Bünz Proofs-of-Delay and Randomness Beacons in Ethereum
2017—Joseph Bonneau Verifiable Lotteries