Paper 2024/952 Original: eprint.iacr.org/2024/952 ↗

Communication Complexity vs Randomness Complexity in Interactive Proofs

Abstract

In this note, we study the interplay between the communication from a verifier in a general private-coin interactive protocol and the number of random bits it uses in the protocol. Under worst-case derandomization assumptions, we show that it is possible to transform any $I$-round interactive protocol that uses $\rho$ random bits into another one for the same problem with the additional property that the verifier's communication is bounded by $O(I\cdot \rho)$. Importantly, this is done with a minor, logarithmic, increase in the communication from the prover to the verifier and while preserving the randomness complexity. Along the way, we introduce a new compression game between computationally-bounded compressor and computationally-unbounded decompressor and a new notion of conditioned efficient distributions that may be of independent interest. Our solutions are based on a combination of perfect hashing and pseudorandom generators.