Reinforced Concrete: A Fast Hash Function for Verifiable Computation

Lorenzo Grassi; Dmitry Khovratovich; Reinhard Lüftenegger; Christian Rechberger; Markus Schofnegger; Roman Walch

Paper 2021/1038

Reinforced Concrete: A Fast Hash Function for Verifiable Computation

Lorenzo Grassi, Dmitry Khovratovich, Reinhard Lüftenegger, Christian Rechberger, Markus Schofnegger, and Roman Walch

Abstract

We propose a new hash function Reinforced Concrete, which is the first generic purpose hash that is fast both for a zero-knowledge prover and in native x86 computations. It is suitable for a various range of zero-knowledge proofs and protocols, from set membership to generic purpose verifiable computation. Being up to 15x faster than its predecessor Poseidon hash, Reinforced Concrete inherits security from traditional time-tested schemes such as AES, whereas taking the zero-knowledge performance from a novel and efficient decomposition of a prime field into compact buckets. The new hash function is suitable for a wide range of applications like privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies, verifiable encryption, protocols with state membership proofs, or verifiable computation. It may serve as a drop-in replacement for various prime-field hashes such as variants of MiMC, Poseidon, Pedersen hash, and others.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Secret-key cryptography
Publication info: Preprint. MINOR revision.
Keywords: hash functions verifiable computation zk- snarks finite fields
Contact author(s): L Grassi @ cs ru nl
khovratovich @ gmail com
reinhard lueftenegger @ iaik tugraz at
christian rechberger @ tugraz at
markus schofnegger @ tugraz at
roman walch @ iaik tugraz at
History: 2022-05-19: last of 3 revisions; 2021-08-16: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2021/1038
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2021/1038,
      author = {Lorenzo Grassi and Dmitry Khovratovich and Reinhard Lüftenegger and Christian Rechberger and Markus Schofnegger and Roman Walch},
      title = {Reinforced Concrete: A Fast Hash Function for Verifiable Computation},
      howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2021/1038},
      year = {2021},
      note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1038}},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2021/1038}
}