Unconditional Proofs-of-Work and Other Possibilities of Thermodynamic Cryptography

In line with advances in recent years about realizing cryptographic functionalities in an information-theoretically secure way from physical phenomena and laws, we propose here to obtain useful tasks from the sole assumption of limited free energy. Specifically, based on that assumption -- resulting...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2022-10
Main Authors: Coiteux-Roy, Xavier, Wolf, Stefan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cryptography
Free energy
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:In line with advances in recent years about realizing cryptographic functionalities in an information-theoretically secure way from physical phenomena and laws, we propose here to obtain useful tasks from the sole assumption of limited free energy. Specifically, based on that assumption -- resulting in a setting loosely related to Maurer's bounded-storage model -- we derive protocols for unconditional proofs-of-thermodynamical-work, secret sharing of free energy, unforgeable money, and proofs-of-position. While our schemes can be considered classical and not quantum per se, they are resistant against both classes of adversaries.
ISSN:2331-8422