Applied research in cryptography, blockchain and distributed systems
Check our latest publication from 15/03/2021:
An Introduction to Asynchronous Binary Byzantine Consenus
itugen will be a blockchain platform exclusively dedicated to e-voting. Using the most recent advances in zero-knowledge protocols as well as quantum-resistant cryptography, itugen will provide maximum transparency and ease of use, while ensuring voter privacy, voter confidentiality, secrecy of ongoing voting and protection against double votes. It is also designed to be massively scalable.
Given the current world-wide political disaffection, we believe that tools like itugen can also be helpful to foster new ways of democratic participation in new political processes - what might be called democracy 2.0.
A special feature of itugen is compatibility with existing blockchains. Its interfaces allow such blockchains to run all or part of their governance on itugen. It will interface with Ethereum, which will make it possible to organise votes of Ethereum ERC20 tokenholders with minimal effort.
isekai makes zero-knowledge proofs accessible to mainstream programmers:
- isekai supports 3 ZKP libraries and 5 proof systems: libsnark (Groth16 and BCTV14a), dalek (Bulletproofs) and libiop (Aurora and Ligero).
- isekai is also the first tool allowing programmers to take existing C or C++ code and generally require only slight modifications to make it compatible with isekai. This is because isekai supports many features of regular programming languages, without using a domain specific language.
Isekai is written using the Crystal programming language and takes LLVM bitcode (LLVM IR) as its input. For more details and installation instructions, visit the isekai github repo:
We released isekai 1.0 on 8 November 2019. This article focuses on the current status and supported language features. Read more...
This post discusses potential applications of isekai to various blockchains. Read more...
We have done a benchmark, comparing 5 proof schemes using identical arithmetic circuits. Read more...
Initially created as a separate legal entity, "Sikoba Research" is now a project of Sikoba Ltd, which is developing a peer-to-peer IOU platform based on blockchain technology.
The purpose of Sikoba Research is to conduct fundamental and applied research in the areas of cryptography, blockchain and distributed systems, and to develop open source software in these areas.
We can help you determine whether ZK proof techniques can be applied to your use case, given the current state of research and existing software implementations. If yes, we help evaluate suitable approaches and work with you to set up a complete end-to-end proof system.
Based on our extensive experience, we can also help you create blockchain applications from scratch.
Verifiable Computing and Privacy-Preserving Smart Contracts - We are developing a framework that allows to delegate execution of smart contracts away from the blockchain while keeping proof-of-correct execution on-chain, thereby preserving the fundamental principles of decentralised ledger technology.
Consensus Protocols - We are working on methods to optimise and speed up consensus protocols for consortium blockchains, in particular one-step consensus and self-pruning networks. We are also developing an approach for non-deterministic state machine replication.
Token Economics - As the blockchain hype is receding, we need new approaches to how tokens are used on smart contract platforms. We are exploring models in which transaction prices are naturally linked to costs of cloud computing and cloud storage.
Blockchain Governance - In order to avoid forks, governance in distributed systems must focus on building a wide consensus among all stakeholders. Our research focuses on consensus models suitable for blockchains.
Partnership Opportunities
We are looking to partner with researchers and dev teams who work on ZK proof systems, with the aim of integrating such systems with isekai.
On the software side, we are looking to cooperate with talented developers who are interested in topics such as programming language design and parsing, cryptography and distributed systems. Our language of choice is Crystal.
Until the end of 2019, Fantom Foundation supported Sikoba's Research efforts in the areas of trustless computing, consensus algorithms and token economics.
On 26-27 June 2019 we hosted ZKLux#1, Luxembourg's first conference specifically dedicated to zero knowledge proofs. If you are interested to speak at a future ZKLux#2 conference, or to participate as a sponsor or partner, please get in touch with us!