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CryptoComputeLab

Mission & Vision

We are a Research Development Lab focused on the intersection of applied cryptography, high performance computing, and programming language design. We strive to create and consume practical research to develop deployed software.

Motivation & Description

Seeded by the hard problems Filecoin Mainnet presented, our long-term vision is to build on the solutions discovered and bring them to maturity. In this way, we will address a broader range of general problems, while discovering and overcoming new hard research development challenges along the way. Our aspiration is to harness this ongoing feedback loop to make ever more ambitious computational techniques practical for real-world applications.

Research Endeavours

  • Elliptic curve cryptography, applied and research
  • Programming Language Research & Development
  • High Performance Computing
    • Chip design & analysis
    • Algorithm & data structure design
    • Server design

Minisites

Publications

View all PL Research publications
2019-08-24 / Conference paper
PLONK: Permutations over Lagrange-bases for oecumenical noninteractive arguments of knowledge
zk-SNARK constructions that utilize an updatable universal structured reference string remove one of the main obstacles in deploying zk-SNARKs[GKM + ]. The important work of Maller et al. [MBKM19] presented Sonic-the first potentially practical zk-SNARK with fully succinct verification for general arithmetic circuits with such an SRS.
Stanford Blockchain Conference / 2020.02.19 / Stanford, CA, USA
Ariel Gabizon , Zachary J Williamson, Oana Ciobotaru
Cryptonet , CryptoComputeLab
Cryptography
2019-05-29 / Report
AuroraLight: Improved prover efficiency and SRS size in a Sonic-like system
Using ideas from the recent Aurora zk-STARK of Ben-Sasson et al. [BCR + 19], we present a zk-SNARK with a universal and updatable SRS similar to the recent construction of Maller et al.
Ariel Gabizon
Cryptonet , CryptoComputeLab
Cryptography
2018-07-14 / Report
PoReps: Proofs of space on useful data
A proof-of-replication (PoRep) is an interactive proof system in which a prover defends a publicly verifiable claim that it is dedicating unique resources to storing one or more retrievable replicas of a data file.
Ben Fisch
Cryptonet , CryptoComputeLab
Cryptography , Distributed systems
2017-07-27 / Report
Power fault tolerance
Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) accounts for faults as the number of faulty nodes and is thus cumbersome to apply to many modern decentralized systems. We introduce the Power Fault Tolerance (PFT) model, which reframes BFT in terms of participants’ influence over the outcome of a protocol, instead of the number of nodes.
Protocol Labs
Cryptonet , CryptoComputeLab
Cryptography , Distributed systems
2017-07-19 / Report
Filecoin: A decentralized storage network
The internet is in the middle of a revolution: centralized proprietary services are being replaced with decentralized open ones; trusted parties replaced with verifiable computation; brittle location addresses replaced with resilient content addresses; inefficient monolithic services replaced with peer-to-peer algo-rithmic markets.
Protocol Labs
Cryptonet , CryptoComputeLab
Cryptography , Distributed systems
2014-07-15 / Report
Filecoin: A cryptocurrency operated file storage network
Filecoin is a distributed electronic currency similar to Bitcoin. Unlike Bitcoin’s computation-only proof-of-work, Filecoin’s proof-of-work function includes a proof-of-retrievability component, which requires nodes to prove they store a particular file. The Filecoin network forms an entirely distributed file storage system, whose nodes are incentivized to store as much of the entire network’s data as they can.
Protocol Labs
Cryptonet , CryptoComputeLab
Cryptography , Distributed systems

Talks

View all PL Research talks
2021-06-03
Scaling zkSNARKs to meet the demands of Filecoin
ETH Global Scaling via Zero-Knoweldge Summit / 2021.05.05
Friedel Ziegelmayer
CryptoComputeLab
Cryptography
2019-02-02
Expected consensus
ConsensusDay 1 / 2019.02.02 / Stanford, CA, USA
Henri Stern
Cryptonet , CryptoComputeLab
Distributed systems
2018-10-23
PoReps: Proof of space on real data
Lab Day 2018 / 2018.10.23 / San Francisco, CA, USA
Ben Fisch
Cryptonet , CryptoComputeLab
Cryptography , Distributed systems

Blog

View all PL Research posts
2022-08-26 / Blog
Protocol Labs research funding recipients 2022
Protocol Labs Research is thrilled to announce the first research funding recipients of 2022! We fund researchers around the world and have given out 11 awards so far this year. These awards include three RFPs, two Summer Research Grants, five Doctoral fellowships, and one Postdoctoral fellowship.
Abby Silin
ConsensusLab , CryptoComputeLab , CryptoEconLab , Cryptonet , Network Research , ProbeLab , Research Acceleration
Cryptography , Distributed systems , Metaresearch , Networking
2021-12-17 / Blog
Protocol Labs research funding recipients 2021, part 1
This has been a prodigious year for generating new funded collaborations between Protocol Labs Research and top academic researchers around the world! We have given out a whopping eighteen awards since August (with others pending).
Jonathan Gross
Cryptonet , CryptoComputeLab
Cryptography
2021-10-22 / Blog
CryptoComputeLab announces proofs release version 10.0.0.0
CryptoComputeLab is very proud to release Proofs v10.0.0! A lot has changed under the hood in this release, but ultimately, it comes down to additional GPU support options and better performance during proving.
nemo, Volker Mische
CryptoComputeLab , Cryptonet
Cryptography
2021-07-29 / Blog
The Winding Journey to Proofs v8.0.0 and beyond

The proofs team is proud to announce the recent proofs releases v8.0.0, v8.0.1, and v8.0.2! These releases are Hyperdrive-enabled, which means that they contain the proof aggregation API that uses SnarkPack – in fact, the major difference between proofs v7.0.x and v8.0.x is the aggregation functionality!

nemo, Volker Mische
CryptoComputeLab , Cryptonet
Cryptography
2021-07-13 / News
zk-SNARKs for the world!
Did you know Filecoin is the largest zk-SNARK network deployed to date? For the past two years we have been working on bringing zk-SNARKs to the world and to the Filecoin Network.
Chhi'mèd Künzang , Jorge M. Soares , Friedel Ziegelmayer
CryptoComputeLab
Cryptography
2021-05-18 / Blog
CryptoComputeLab announces proofs release versions 7.0.0 and 7.0.1
The Proofs Team is pleased to announce the recent release of version 7.0.0 of the proofs library. The most notable improvement is that we’ve replaced the old gpu code with the new gpu2 code.
nemo, Volker Mische
CryptoComputeLab
Cryptography
2021-05-13 / Careers
We're hiring!
Protocol Labs Research has been growing rapidly, with the launch of CryptoComputeLab, CryptoEconLab, and CryptoNetLab, a number of new projects, and new researchers, advisors, and support staff joining the team.
Jorge M. Soares
CryptoComputeLab , CryptoEconLab , Cryptonet , ResNetLab
2021-03-24 / Blog
CryptoComputeLab announces proofs release 6.1.0
Today we’re proud to announce the recent release of rust-fil-proofs v6.1.0. This release contains a number of significant re-factors and performance optimizations, but we’d like to dig deeper into a couple of them to show some of the real-world impacts.
nemo, Volker Mische
CryptoComputeLab
Cryptography
2020-11-23 / Blog
A research perspective on Filecoin, part two
In Part One, we traced the intellectual and technological history of modern implementations of distributed ledger technology. Now let’s take a stroll through the technological landscape around the time of Filecoin’s release:
David Dalrymple , Irene Giacomelli , Karola Kirsanow
Cryptonet , CryptoComputeLab
Cryptoeconomics , Cryptography , Distributed systems
2020-11-16 / Blog
A research perspective on Filecoin
The Filecoin network is launching in the middle of a revolution in internet architecture, where vulnerable centralized services dependent on trusted parties are being replaced with resilient decentralized solutions based on verifiable computation, and internet services are being relocated from inefficient central monoliths to the far reaches of the network by peer-to-peer markets.
David Dalrymple , Irene Giacomelli , Karola Kirsanow
Cryptonet , CryptoComputeLab
Cryptoeconomics , Cryptography , Distributed systems
2020-05-22 / News
Rosario Gennaro named 2020 IACR Fellow
In May, Rosario Gennaro was named a 2020 Fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR). IACR established its Fellows Program in 2002 to recognize oustanding members for significant technical and professional contributions to cryptology and related fields.
Jonathan Gross
Cryptonet , CryptoComputeLab
Cryptography