Abstract

While non-black-box techniques suffice to establish theoretical feasibility, black-box constructions are often the gold standard for achieving modularity, efficiency, and broad applicability. The MPC-in-the-head paradigm not only revealed a surprising and elegant connection between secure multiparty computation (MPC) and zero knowledge (ZK), but also narrowed the gap between black-box and non-black-box constructions for serveral cryptographic primitives. In this talk, I will explore how the pursuit of black-box approaches has raised interesting theoretical questions while simultaneously enabling the development of some of the fastest and most scalable MPC and ZK systems to date. I will present several of our recent real-world implementations developed at our startup, including:

1) A maliciously secure, dishonest-majority MPC protocol supporting 10,000 parties for distributed RSA key generation;
2) A protocol capable of executing 1,000 auctions in parallel among 60 parties in under 5 minutes; as well as scheduling a meeting between 3 or more parties!
3) A developer-friendly ZK framework so intuitive and portable, we can vibe code from a mobile phone!

These results highlight how black-box cryptography can power both rigorous theory and practical innovation at scale.