As U.S. authorities continue to crack down on privacy agreements, privacy technology has once again become a market focus. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently shared an article he published in 2020, providing a detailed introduction to Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) technology, which allows for data processing while protecting personal information.
Introduction to FHE:
FHE is widely applicable and differs from Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZK) and Secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC). Vitalik Buterin has been discussing privacy issues frequently lately. He first spoke out in support of the privacy protocol Railgun and then criticized the attack on cryptocurrency values after the controversial provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was extended for 2 years.
On the 5th, Vitalik Buterin tweeted that many people have recently shown interest in Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) technology. Therefore, he republished his article from 2020, which provides an in-depth explanation of the mathematical principles behind FHE.
According to Vitalik Buterin, FHE has long been considered one of the holy grails of cryptography. It is an encryption technology that allows third parties to perform computations on encrypted data and obtain encrypted results. The third party can return the results to anyone with the original data decryption key, but the third party itself cannot decrypt the data or the results.
Vitalik Buterin gives an example of a user receiving a series of emails and wanting to use a third-party spam filter to check if they are spam. Typically, spam filters would want to protect the privacy of their algorithms. Either the spam filter provider would want to keep their source code closed, or they would rely on a very large database that they don’t want to disclose because it would make attacks easier. However, users care about the privacy of their data and do not want to upload their unencrypted emails to a third party. FHE can be used to achieve this.
The article mentions that FHE has wide-ranging applications, including in the blockchain field. It can be used to implement privacy-protecting lightweight clients, more efficient stealth address protocols, and more scalable solutions for privacy protection protocols that currently require each user to personally scan the entire blockchain to obtain incoming transactions.
FHE can also be used for secure data sharing markets, allowing users to perform specific calculations on their data while maintaining complete control over their own data.
Furthermore, FHE can be a component of more powerful cryptographic primitives, such as more efficient multi-party computation protocols, and may eventually cover program obfuscation.
Previously, Portal Ventures discussed FHE technology in an article last year, analyzing its differences from Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZK) and Secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC). It pointed out that in the cryptocurrency field, FHE can be used to build more private smart contracts and other blockchain applications, ZK is used to establish scalable blockchain solutions, and MPC is primarily used for private key management and custody.
Although FHE, ZK, and MPC overlap in certain aspects, they each have their own unique advantages and application scenarios. In the cryptocurrency community, these three technologies have provided enormous potential for enhancing privacy and security. However, their combination and further research remain active areas within the encryption community.
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