Deepak Maram and Harjasleen Malvai
TL;DR Decentralized identity systems allow users to gather and manage their own credentials under the banner of self-created decentralized identifiers (DIDs). The key focus of DIDs is on shifting the control of a credential into users’ hands. Existing decentralized identity proposals, however, suffer from several problems. First and foremost, how do you bootstrap an ecosystem of credential issuers? It is unlikely that most existing legacy providers suddenly switch and issue such credentials. Second, like with cryptocurrencies, DID systems burden users with managing their own keys creating a significant risk of key loss. They also omit…
by Jun-You Liu (Cornell, IC3), Surya Bakshi (UIUC, IC3), Shreyas Gandlur (Princeton), Ankush Das (CMU), and Andrew Miller (UIUC, IC3)
This research was done in collaboration with the UIUC Decentralized Systems Lab (DSL).
This post serves as the appendix to our post, “Using Universal Composability to Implement Off-Chain Payment Channels,” so please start there.
UC in somewhat more detail
In more detail,
Z is the environment, which is the distinguisher. Its goal is to distinguish the two worlds it’s talking to, which one is the ideal world and which one is the real world. F_spec is the ideal functionality in the ideal world. It is…
by Jun-You Liu (Cornell, IC3), Surya Bakshi (UIUC, IC3), Shreyas Gandlur (Princeton), Ankush Das (CMU), and Andrew Miller (UIUC, IC3)
This research was done in collaboration with the UIUC Decentralized Systems Lab (DSL).
Payment channels are one of the fundamental approaches for scaling cryptocurrency networks. In the academic cryptography literature on payment channels, it has been effective to use universal composability (UC) framework as a way of rigorously modeling and giving security definitions. However, there’s been a big gap between the UC model and the actual software implementations of payment channels that have been designed and maintained by cryptocurrency developers…
IC3
The Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3) is a blockchain research initiative based at Cornell. Find out more about IC3 research at initc3.org.
