Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, has introduced a novel cryptographic protocol known as Circle STARKs, which aims to enhance the security and efficacy of blockchain operations.
In his most recent post, Buterin elucidates that this technological advancement augments the speed of proofs without jeopardizing security measures by employing smaller fields such as Mersenne31.
“The most important trend in STARK protocol design over the last two years has been the switch to working over small fields.”
About STARKs
Traditional Scalable Transparent ARguments of Knowledge (STARKs) operate over 256-bit fields, which, while secure, are typically inefficient, according to the post.
Circle STARKs utilize smaller fields, which leads to more efficient gains, faster-proving velocities, and reduced computational costs. For instance, an M3 laptop can verify 620,000 Poseidon2 hashes per second.
Buterin observes that the previous STARK implementation was “naturally compatible” with verifying elliptic curve-based signatures because of the smaller fields. However, the large numbers involved resulted in inefficiency.
Circle STARKs security
Traditional small fields are susceptible to brute-force attacks and have restricted potential values.
Circle STARKs mitigate this vulnerability by employing extension fields and conducting numerous random checks, broadening the range of values attackers must predict.
This security measure establishes a computational barrier prohibitive to adversaries, thereby preserving the integrity of the protocol.
“With STARKs over smaller fields, we have a problem: there are only about two billion possible values of x to choose from, and so an attacker wanting to make a fake proof need only try two billion times—a lot of work, but quite doable for a determined attacker!”
The Fast Reed-Solomon Interactive Oracle Proofs of Proximity (FRI) is a critical component of Circle STARKs, as they establish that a function is a polynomial of a specific degree.
Introducing Circle FRI, an approach that guarantees the integrity of the cryptographic process, Circle STARKs guarantee that non-polynomial inputs fail the proof.
Circle STARKs provide increased flexibility and versatility for efficient computational performance by utilizing compact fields and this new mathematical structure.
