Hot topics at the event

The event was structured such that multiple talks where held in parallel which gave the options to follow whichever track was most interesting or relevant at the time. Luke: “the talks I enjoyed the most were those on post quantum security and Lattice-Based Zero-Knowledge (ZK). The initial reason for me taking towards those topics was the manner in which the papers were presented. I enjoyed the theoretical side to both areas as it was explained with strong mathematical context, which as a tool, always helps me to visualize the content of the paper.”

Lattice-Based Zero-Knowledge

Luke: “The reason I enjoyed the ZK works so much, is closely linked to my work at Dusk as well as the resounding message of privacy continually echoed by the crypto community. I feel that there isn’t much which holds more justification in my work than protecting peoples privacy and reinforcing that message with Dusk. To see so many advancements and new techniques for protocols which involve zero knowledge is truly refreshing. The paper which captivated me the most was ‘Zero-Knowledge Proofs on Secret-Shared Data via Fully Linear PCPs’, as I plan to use some of the presented techniques in upcoming projects with Dusk. Having the opportunity to scrutinize the authors at the event was exceptionally useful in helping both my understanding of the paper and amalgamating it into Dusk Peer-to-Peer (P2P) vision.”

Post Quantum Security

Luke: “Post quantum security, however, stuck with me for a different reason. It seems that people take to a level of procrastination when they paraphrase ‘that’s so distant in the future’, but it seems the post quantum is soon to be an adapted and utilized standard for cryptographic algorithms, which is nothing short of truly exciting. This is strongly backed up by two further reasons related to the conference. The first is that if the lists of accepted papers from Crypto 2018 and Crypto 2019 are compared, there are over three times the numbers of those surrounding the topics of quantum resistance at this years event.

The second reason stems from being able to talk with speakers and other conference attendees; much of the topics of discussion from such individuals, which drives the research from institutes like Microsoft, UC, IBM, MIT and Stanford, was centered around post quantum cryptography.”