Zerocash: Addressing Bitcoin's Privacy Problem

A Google TechTalk, 8/28/17, presented by Alessandro Chiesa Abstract: In Bitcoin, a payment's details are broadcast in the clear, so that anyone can verify its validity. Unfortunately, this violates user privacy and sacrifices coin fungibility. I will describe the Zerocash protocol, which uses zero knowledge proofs to achieve privacy-preserving payments in a Bitcoin-like system. This protocol was recently deployed in the wild, as part of the cryptocurrency Zcash. About the Speaker: Alessandro Chiesa is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley. His research spans the areas of complexity theory, cryptography, and security, and focuses on the theoretical foundations and practical implementations of cryptographic proof systems such as zero knowledge proofs. He is a co-inventor of Zerocash and co-founder of Zcash. He is an author of libsnark, the leading open-source library for succinct zero knowledge proofs. He has received a Ph.D. in computer science from MIT in 2014, and B.S. degrees in computer science and in mathematics from MIT in 2009.