Verifiable Delay Functions

Dan Boneh; Joseph Bonneau; Benedikt Bünz; Ben Fisch

Paper 2018/601 Original: eprint.iacr.org/2018/601 ↗

Verifiable Delay Functions

Dan Boneh

Joseph Bonneau

Benedikt Bünz

Ben Fisch

Abstract

We study the problem of building a verifiable delay function (VDF). A VDF requires a specified number of sequential steps to evaluate, yet produces a unique output that can be efficiently and publicly verified. VDFs have many applications in decentralized systems, including public randomness beacons, leader election in consensus protocols, and proofs of replication. We formalize the requirements for VDFs and present new candidate constructions that are the first to achieve an exponential gap between evaluation and verification time.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Cryptographic protocols
Publication info: Preprint.
History: 2019-06-26: last updated; 2018-06-18: published
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2018/601
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2018/601,
      author = {Dan Boneh and Joseph Bonneau and Benedikt Bünz and Ben Fisch},
      title = {Verifiable Delay Functions},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2018/601},
      year = {2018},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/601}
}