Microsoft’s Magnetar Research Could Matter to Blockchain Proof Costs

Reason to trust Strict editorial policy that focuses on accuracy, relevance, and impartiality Created by industry experts and meticulously reviewed The highest standards in reporting and publishing Strict editorial policy that focuses on accuracy, relevance, and impartiality Morbi pretium leo et nisl aliquam mollis. Quisque arcu lorem, ultricies quis pellentesque nec, ullamcorper eu odio. TL;DR: Microsoft Research says its Magnetar system makes proofs of ordinary program execution faster while relying on standard hash-based cryptography. Zero-knowledge systems promise that a computation can be checked without trusting the machine that performed it. One reason they remain difficult to deploy is the cost of generating those proofs. Microsoft Research’s October 15 Magnetar announcement tackles that bottleneck using a virtual machine designed to prove ordinary programmes. The researchers say Magnetar supports code compiled from Rust, Go and C and performs between 10 and 39 times faster on average than certain comparable proving systems across their benchmarks. Verification takes roughly 12 milliseconds, according to Microsoft’s tests. The system is built around standard hash functions,...