Kryptology, according to Coinbase, allows and empowers developers to build new crypto innovations using cutting-edge encryption.
On Monday, Coinbase, the world’s fourth-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, announced the launch of Kryptology, a new cryptography library that would serve as a toolkit for blockchain developers. These include APIs that are safe, audited, and simple to use, as well as a collection of common challenges and lessons acquired over the course of crypto’s history.
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin would be nothing more than digital lines of code that anybody could copy/paste if they didn’t use cryptography. It would be simple to replicate and falsify, resulting in serious problems such as money double-spending. Boneh–Lynn–Shacham, or BLS, signatures are a recent breakthrough that is used to authenticate senders’ identities and confirm transactions while guaranteeing their data is properly maintained.
The Shamir Secret Sharing, or SSS, algorithm is another recent use. SSS shares a secret value among several participants, known as shareholders, who must then collaborate to reconstruct the secret. The system is suitable for keeping private keys that grant access to Decentralized Finance (DeFi), pools, and smart contracts that encrypt significant sums of money.
Zero-knowledge proofs, on the other hand, ensure that encrypted communications may be passed on and authenticated without disclosing underlying personal data, making them perfect for use in complicated DeFi applications. Finally, the development of new elliptic curves, such as Pasta, may enhance crypto wallets.
Why cryptography?
Cryptography is the foundation of cryptocurrency. To overcome the Byzantine Generals problem, Bitcoin combined existing but not-yet-in-production academic cryptography (hashcash, Chaum’s E-cash, Merkle trees) with economic game theory, as outlined in Bitcoin’s academic pedigree.
Cryptography is evolving.
The feedback loop is accelerating at breakneck speed. In ZCash, cryptographers used zero-knowledge techniques to create private transactions; The Internet Computer is based on new cryptographic breakthroughs; Monero uses ring signatures to gain confidentiality; skale uses BLS to create roll-ups to improve scale and reduce storage on-chain, and Mina and ZCash use Halo 2 and Pasta.
Coinbase is also working to implement near-future encryption. zkSNARKS and Cryptographic Accumulators, FROST, and Threshold Signing are some of the topics covered in this paper. While encouraging more creativity is our major goal, we also want Kryptology to raise the bar for what constitutes a reliable and useful cryptographic library. The library gives developers access to a set of APIs that are safe, certified, and simple to use.
Kryptology is intended to be misuse-resistant (i.e., “difficult to screw up”), allowing developers to concentrate on what they do best. We hope that this results in additional projects that contribute to the development and growth of the crypto ecosystem.
