Eurocrypt 2025

Eli Ben-Sasson

Title

The Rise of zkSTARKs as Blockchain Scaling Technology

Abstract

In a surprising turn of events, zk-STARKs – Scalable, Transparent ARguments of Knowledge – have risen from being viewed as arcane and impractical theory to the most efficient and future-proof way to scale blockchains, saving billions of dollars for blockchain users. zkSTARKs are also among the most promising approaches to making blockchain technology post-quantum secure. My personal story is intertwined with that bigger story. Starting as a theoretical computer scientist, I unknowingly chose a “theory to practice” path as early as 2001 that led to a revelation in May 2013 at a Bitcoin conference – that cryptographic proofs are the scaling solution for blockchain. Since then, I slowly moved from theory to entrepreneurship and from math to blockchain. STARKs are a marvelous and active research area, in which old computational models — like the MIP (multiprover interactive proofs) and IOP (interactive oracle proofs) models — find rekindled interest; classical algorithms like the Fast Fourier Transform are repurposed into new interactive protocols like FRI, DEEP-FRI and STIR; and algebraic coding results like the Guruswami-Sudan list-decoding algorithm have their first practical application as a STARK soundness analysis tool.

Biography

Eli is a co-founder and CEO of StarkWare, and Chairman of its Board of Directors. He has been researching cryptographic and zero knowledge proofs of computational integrity ever since he received his Phd in Theoretical Computer Science from the Hebrew University in 2001. Eli is a co-inventor of the STARK, FRI and Zerocash protocols and a Founding Scientist of the Zcash Company. Over the years he held research positions at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Harvard and MIT, and, most recently, was a Professor of CS at Technion, which he left to co-found StarkWare.

Huijia (Rachel) Lin

Title

Expedition to Obfustopia: Indistinguishability Obfuscation from Well-Studied Assumptions to New Frontiers

Abstract

At least since the initial public proposal of public-key cryptography based on computational hardness assumptions (Diffie and Hellman, 1976), cryptographers have contemplated the possibility of a “one-way compiler” that translates computer programs into “unintelligible” ones that compute the same function. This vision has been formalized in the notion of indistinguishability obfuscation (iO), which over the past decade has emerged as a powerful and versatile tool for enabling a wide range of goals both within and beyond cryptography. In this talk, we will outline milestones in the conceptual and technical development of iO, and the tortuous decade-long journey toward its realization. We will convey the high-level ideas behind the recent constructions based on three well-studied hardness assumptions, as well as explore the emerging frontier: latest efforts to realize iO from simple-to-state assumptions over integer lattices. These advances form a robust foundation for obfuscation and raise intriguing open questions for future work. Together, they chart our ongoing expedition toward Obfustopia - a long-envisioned land where general-purpose obfuscation becomes both theoretically sound and practically attainable.

Biography

Huijia (Rachel) Lin is a Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, where she holds the Paul G. Allen Development Professorship. Her research focuses on cryptography and its connections to theoretical computer science and security. She has made foundational contributions to program obfuscation, functional encryption, attribute-based encryption, secure multiparty computation, non-malleability, and concurrent security. Dr. Lin has received several honors in recognition of her work. She is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, a Hellman Fellowship, a Cisco Research Award, a JPMorgan Faculty Award, and the Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship. Her research has been recognized with a Best Paper Award at STOC 2021, a Best Paper Award at Eurocrypt 2018, and a Best Paper Honorable Mention at Eurocrypt 2016. In 2022, she was invited to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians and was named one of Science News's “10 Scientists to Watch.” Before joining the University of Washington, Dr. Lin was an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University and completed postdoctoral research at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Department of Computer Science at Boston University.

IACR Distinguished Lecture

Kenny Paterson

Title

Understanding Cryptography, Backwards

Abstract

In this talk, I'll explore some aspects of cryptography and cryptographic research, as seen through a personal lens. I'll discuss the roles of serendipity, creativity, preparation and pivoting. I'll also talk about Feynmann's idea of the power of having a "toolbox" of techniques available when trying to solve research problems.

Biography

Kenny Paterson has been a Professor in the Computer Science department at ETH Zurich since 2019, where he leads the Applied Cryptography research group. Prior to that he was at Royal Holloway, University of London (2001-2019) and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories (1996-2001). He also did postdocs at ETH Zurich (1993-1994) and Royal Holloway (1994-1996). He gained his PhD in the area of Discrete Mathematics from the University of London (1990-1993) and his Bachelors degree in Mathematics from the University of Glasgow (1986-1990). Kenny was made a Fellow of the IACR (2017) "for research and service contributions spanning theory and practice, and improving the security of widely deployed protocols." He was program chair of Eurocrypt 2011, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cryptology (2017-2020), and an invited speaker at Asiacrypt 2014 and Eurocrypt 2024. He is co-founder of the Real World Cryptography symposium. Kenny's current research interests include the analysis of deployed Cryptography (aka ``Cryptography in the Wild''), and the development of new cryptographic tools that are fashioned with practical applications in mind.