Abstract Fair exchange is a challenging problem for two mutually distrusting players. It is widely known that fair exchange is impossible without a trusted third party (TTP). However, relying on a single TTP can cause a single-point failure. An intuitive idea is to adopt multiple TTPs to distribute trust. This paper constructs a two-party optimistic fair exchange (OFE) protocol using decentralized ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE), achieving decentralized TTPs. This is achievable because decentralized CP-ABE ciphertext supports a nested access control policy. A nested access control policy fits perfectly in a fair exchange protocol which contains multiple roles (i.e. players and TTPs). Further, we apply non-interactive zero knowledge proofs to prove the well-formedness of ciphertexts, so as to enforce players to follow the protocol specification honestly. Consequently, we construct an OFE protocol in which each playerâs operations are publicly verifiable without revealing secret information. Also, we obtain decentralized TTPs with optimism (i.e. the TTPs are involved only when arbitration is required), autonomy (i.e. the TTPs do not need to interact with each other), statelessness (i.e. the TTPs do not need to store data for the exchange protocol) and verifiability (i.e. the TTPs are publicly verifiable). Compared with previous work, our protocol assumes only a public communication channel and each partyâs operations are publicly verifiable. Besides, it achieves a favorable $O(n)$ verification complexity in the normal case, where $n$ is the number of TTPs. Finally, we present a proof-of-concept implementation to demonstrate the feasibility.
Abstract The MinRank problem is an NP-complete problem that is prevalent in multivariate cryptography and its goal is to find a non-zero linear combination of given a series of matrices over a ring such that the obtained matrix has a small rank. At Asiacrypt 2001, two Zero-Knowledge Proofs of Knowledge (ZKPoK) for the MinRank problem are proposed, and we call them MRZK and MRZK$^{\dagger }$, respectively. The latter is an improved version of the proof size of the former. However, the efficiency of MRZK$^{\dagger }$ has been open and not analyzed. While the MRZK protocol is secure, it must be repeated many times due to the soundness error $2/3$, which leads to the large proof size. For 128-bit security, the MRZK protocol is executed at least 219 iterations and the proof size is about 32 KB. In this paper, we first show that the efficiency of MRZK$^{\dagger }$ is impractical due to unreasonable parameter size. However, when the parameter size is tuned and the efficiency is improved, an imposter can be efficiently constructed. Then, to alleviate the large proof size of MRZK, inspired by the technique designing ZKPoK (Eurocrypt 2020), we propose a sigma protocol with helper to prove the solution to the MinRank problem. Finally, we transform the sigma protocol with helper into a standard ZKPoK (MRZK$^{\sharp }$) by removing the helper. The MRZK$^{\sharp }$ protocol can achieve any small soundness error and enjoy the proof size of about 15 KB (53% improvement over MRZK).
Abstract Bootle et al. in CRYPTO 2019 proposed a zero knowledge proof for an $\mathrm{ISIS}_{m,n,q,\beta }$ instance $A\vec{s} = \vec{u} \bmod q$ with $\|\vec{s}\|_{\infty }\leq \beta $ (BLS scheme). It was implemented by transforming the instance into the form $A^{\prime }\vec{s}^{\prime } =\vec{u}\bmod q$, where the coefficients of $\vec{s}^{\prime}$ are in $\{0,1,2\}$, and proved the latter in an exact way. With the concrete parameters $m=1024,n=2048,\beta =1,q\approx 2^{32}$, their proof is of length 384.03KB. In this paper, we decrease the proof size of BLS scheme by two techniques. The first one takes effect on some special parameters. For these parameters, using the binary basic set instead of the ternary one results in a shorter proof. The second one deals with the repetition of the lower half in BLS scheme. Observing that what the lower half proves is of form $\mathbf{B}\vec{\mathbf{r}}=\vec{\mathbf{t}}$ with a short vector $\vec{\mathbf{r}}$ of polynomials, a variant of parallel repetition can be used to shorten the proof size. Combining these two techniques together, the proof size of the above-mentioned instance can be reduced to 220.01KB, only 57.3$\%$ of BLS scheme.
Electronic Know Your Customer (E-KYC) is an essential process that is widely used to verify the identities of customers for various purposes.However, traditional E-KYC methods have several limitations, including security and privacy concerns.In this paper, we propose a secured and privacy-preserving E-KYC system using blockchain technology.The proposed system utilizes the security and immutability of the blockchain network to store customer information securely and ensure that it cannot be tampered with.The system also utilizes smart contracts to automate the E-KYC process while ensuring the privacy of customer information.Additionally, we propose the use of a zero-knowledge proof protocol to enable users to prove their identity without revealing their personal information.
Threshold signatures are a fundamental cryptographic primitive used in many practical applications. As proposed by Boneh and Komlo (CRYPTO'22), TAPS is a threshold signature that is a hybrid of privacy and accountability. It enables a combiner to combine t signature shares while revealing nothing about the threshold t or signing quorum to the public and asks a tracer to track a signature to the quorum that generates it. However, TAPS has three disadvantages: it 1) structures upon a centralized model, 2) assumes that both combiner and tracer are honest, and 3) leaves the tracing unnotarized and static. In this work, we introduce Decentralized, Threshold, dynamically Accountable and Private Signature (DeTAPS) that provides decentralized combining and tracing, enhanced privacy against untrusted combiners (tracers), and notarized and dynamic tracing. Specifically, we adopt Dynamic Threshold Public-Key Encryption (DTPKE) to dynamically notarize the tracing process, design non-interactive zero knowledge proofs to achieve public verifiability of notaries, and utilize the Key-Aggregate Searchable Encryption to bridge TAPS and DTPKE so as to awaken the notaries securely and efficiently. In addition, we formalize the definitions and security requirements for DeTAPS. Then we present a generic construction and formally prove its security and privacy. To evaluate the performance, we build a prototype based on SGX2 and Ethereum.
Yang Liu, Liangjie Lin, Lin Jiang, Weizhe Zhang ¡ 9 authors
Abstract In the era of digital marketing, advertisements have become an indispensable part. One of the central challenges is advertising attribution which explains the amount of contribution every publisher has with the conversions. However, through observation, we have found that current advertising platforms attribution, advertisers attribution, or thirdâparty platforms attribution all have the problems of trust, data leakage, and data forgery. To fill the gap, our work's main contribution is combining blockchain with advertising attribution to propose an architecture for improving the privacyâpreserving degree and amount. In the proposed architecture, publishers, and advertisers can store realâtime data on a blockchain. The attribution results are credible because blockchain is decentralized, tamperâproof, and traceable. We combine privacy set intersection and zeroâknowledge proof technology to increase the privacy of flowing data. In addition, we describe a preliminary prototype in which publishers, advertisers, and advertising platforms can get the corresponding attribution details. To show its effectiveness, we analyze it from different perspectives, including communication cost, attribution accuracy, and time cost. The results show that our communication cost has significantly reduced compared to the recent studies.
Junrui Liu, Ian Kretz, Hanzhi Liu, Bryan EâXin Tan ¡ 10 authors
Zero-knowledge (ZK) proof systems have emerged as a promising solution for building security-sensitive applications. However, bugs in ZK applications are extremely difficult to detect and can allow a malicious party to silently exploit the system without leaving any observable trace. This paper presents Coda, a novel statically-typed language for building zero-knowledge applications. Critically, Coda makes it possible to formally specify and statically check properties of a ZK application through a rich refinement type system. One of the key challenges in formally verifying ZK applications is that they require reasoning about polynomial equations over large prime fields that go beyond the capabilities of automated theorem provers. Coda mitigates this challenge by generating a set of Coq lemmas that can be proven in an interactive manner with the help of a tactic library. We have used Coda to re-implement 77 arithmetic circuits from widely-used Circom libraries and applications. Our evaluation shows that Coda makes it possible to specify important and formally verify correctness properties of these circuits. Our evaluation also revealed 6 previously-unknown vulnerabilities in the original Circom projects.
Since the concern of privacy leakage extremely discourages user participation in sharing data, federated learning has gradually become a promising technique for both academia and industry for achieving collaborative learning without leaking information about the local data. Unfortunately, most federated learning solutions cannot efficiently verify the execution of each participant's local machine learning model and protect the privacy of user data, simultaneously. In this article, we first propose a Zero-Knowledge Proof-based Federated Learning (ZKP-FL) scheme on blockchain. It leverages zero-knowledge proof for both the computation of local data and the aggregation of local model parameters, aiming to verify the computation process without requiring the plaintext of the local data. We further propose a Practical ZKP-FL (PZKP-FL) scheme to support fraction and non-linear operations. Specifically, we explore a Fraction-Integer mapping function, and use Taylor expansion to efficiently handle non-linear operations while maintaining the accuracy of the federated learning model. We also analyze the security of PZKP-FL. Performance analysis demonstrates that the whole running time of the PZKP-FL scheme is approximately less than one minute in parallel execution.
The emergence of technologies such as cloud computing, big data analytics, the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile internet, artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain has given rise to several critical security concerns, especially regarding privacy breaches.Sophisticated cryptographic algorithms and protocols, including secure multiparty computation, homomorphic encryption, zero-knowledge proof, and indistinguishability obfuscation, provide effective solutions to address these challenges.The cryptographic community has already witnessed numerous commendable efforts aimed at mitigating privacy breaches through the utilization of advanced cryptographic algorithms and protocols.This study offers a comprehensive survey of the designs and applications of such algorithms and protocols, assessing them based on their security level, module rationale, and limitations regarding security and performance.This survey acts as a valuable resource for readers seeking a thorough understanding of the latest advancements in cryptographic algorithms and protocols. It also serves to bridge the gap between the theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of these advanced cryptographic primitives.
A new breed of consumer-facing financial applications called decentralized financial applications (DeFi) is structured using smart contracts and runs on permissionless blockchain technologies. In this chapter, the authors contextualize the DeFi idea within the theoretical framework of blockchain and related technologies and their potential real-world applications. In addition, the authors looked at the basic DeFi concepts and application scenarios for DeFi today and pinpointed distributed ledger technologies, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and zero-knowledge proofs as the three key technologies that help revolutionize DeFi. The authors concluded that blockchain is the foundation of DeFi, and AI and ML capabilities help organizations deliver crypto insights to their users to cope with the market volatility, and zero-knowledge proofs ensure the security of digital transactions in an unregulated, decentralized finance world.
Farhan Shikalgar, Farhaan Khan, Saud Kadiri, Anas Khan
Improving efficiency and performance is an important topic in the world today. As it is well-known, cooperative computing is an effective and traditional approach, and it is widely used in various fields. Inspired by this idea, take E- commerce for example, Security is one of its important indicators. In E-commerce, the security technology has become a major issue restricting the rapid development and popularization of E- commerce.With the advent of new technologies, Blockchain plays a major role in ecommerce sector.With the characteristics of decentralization, persistency, anonymity and auditability, blockchain technology is a new tool to solve the product traceability, information security and privacy, payment efficiency and cost reduction in cross- border e-business.Existing E-commerce models are trapped in a dilemma between the proof of ownership and privacy protection. To address this issue,We have made a platform Shoppingverse which is a blockchain based ecommerce.we design a privacy-preserving business protocol by employing private smart contracts in the negotiation phase. The protocol allows counterparties make deals without the disclosure of private information such as identities, addresses, and phone numbers. Moreover, we employ the zero- knowledge proof to guarantee the ownership. Key Words: Ethereum, Blockchain, Ecommerce, Smart Contract.
The tasks of education renewal, which are related to the revision of its content and pedagogy for sustainable development, are considered. The complexity of these tasks and their historical unprecedentedness are emphasized. The possibilities of digital technology in education in solving these problems are justified. The advantages of artificial intelligence, blockchain and zero-knowledge proof when combined to become education for sustainable development are analyzed. The most promising areas for their use in the renewal of education are listed.
Abdul Qawi Jalili, Anton Dziatkovskii, Platinum VC & Incubator Australia
This research paper aims to elucidate the intricate relationship between artificial intelligence (AI), state data security, and the volatile circumstances induced by sanctions and economic pressure. By undertaking a comprehensive literature review, the study not only offers a historical context of state data security mechanisms but also delves deeply into the advancements provided by AI-driven solutions. The work serves as a crucial reference for policymakers, cybersecurity experts, and academic researchers, laying a foundation for the nuanced understanding of AIâs capabilities and limitations within the realms of state data security and economic stressors. Employing an analytical framework, the paper systematically distills knowledge from a wide array of sources, including academic articles, technical reports, policy briefs, and international standards. This multidimensional analysis allows for a holistic understanding of the state-of-the-art AI technologies, their applicability in fortifying state data security, and the ethical labyrinth that states must navigate. Paper underscores a multitude of challenges and ethical considerations that are often overshadowed by the technological prowess of AI. These encompass issues such as data privacy infringement, potential for mass surveillance, and ethical quandaries around bias and discrimination. The paper also throws light on the pivotal factors of accountability and transparency, essential for maintaining public trust in AI-augmented state security mechanisms. The study raises awareness about AI-driven cyber threats, focusing on the paradox of employing AI to enhance security while also becoming susceptible to advanced AI-driven cyberattacks. Paper addresses the long-term sustainability and resilience of AI-enabled security measures, particularly in the context of evolving cyber threats and the inherent instability brought about by economic pressures and sanctions. The resilience of AI algorithms and systems under these specific conditions is scrutinized, offering a forward-looking perspective on the adaptability and robustness of AI technologies in safeguarding state data.
As the main food source of the world's population, grain quality safety is of great significance to the healthy development of human beings. The grain food supply chain is characterized by its long life cycle, numerous and complex business data, difficulty defining private information, and difficult managing and sharing. In order to strengthen the ability of information application processing and coordination of the grain food supply chain under many risk factors, an information management model suitable for the grain food supply chain is studied based on the blockchain multi-chain technology. First, the information on key links in the grain food supply chain is analyzed to obtain privacy data classifications. Second, a multi-chain network model of the grain food supply chain is constructed, and based on this model, the hierarchical encryption and storage mode of private data as well as the relay cross-chain communication mode, are designed. In addition, a complete consensus process, including CPBFT, ZKP, and KZKP algorithms, is designed for the global information collaborative consensus under the multi-chain architecture. Finally, the model is verified through performance simulation, theory analysis, and prototype system verification in terms of its correctness, security, scalability, and consensus efficiency. The results show that this research model effectively reduces the storage redundancy and deals with problems of data differential sharing in traditional single-chain research, as well as provides a secure data protection mechanism, a credible data interaction mechanism, and an efficient multi-chain collaborative consensus mechanism. By attempting to apply blockchain multi-chain technology to the grain food supply chain, this study provides new research ideas for the trusted protection of data and information collaborative consensus in this field.
The problem of determining the position relationship between points and polygons is very extensive in practical applications. However, the existing solutions are only applicable to the case of convex polygons, and no solutions are given for arbitrary polygons. In addition, most of the existing schemes are carried out under the semi-honest model, and cannot resist the active attack of malicious adversaries. In order to solve these problems, this paper uses Paillier's encryption scheme, the idea of zero-knowledge proof to design a decision protocol to protect the position relationship between points and arbitrary polygons, which can not only prevent the deceptive behavior of malicious adversaries, but also extend the application from convex polygons to arbitrary polygons. A simulation example is used to prove that this paper is safe and efficient under the malicious model.
The vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) offer additional opportunities for the development of intelligent transportation. Network-connected vehicles can help drivers adjust their driving environment and improve overall road safety by accessing information such as maps, signal status and road conditions. Due to the open nature of the communication channel, it is necessary for the receiving vehicle to verify the source and integrity of the message. Most of the existing researches are based on PKI certificate authentication model. However, there are some problems in this model: the distribution, storage and revocation of identity certificates need to consume a lot of vehicle resources, and the centralized structural framework cannot form an effective supervision of node operation. In order to solve the above problems, this paper proposes an identity authentication mechanism based on blockchain and zero-knowledge proof. In the blockchain structure composed of fog nodes, vehicles only need to store the generation seeds of communication pseudonyms to complete the communication within the coverage of fog nodes, which can effectively reduce the resource overhead caused by pseudonym distribution and revocation. Security analysis shows that our scheme can meet the security requirements of VANETs, and performance analysis shows that our scheme is better than existing schemes.
Given that reliable cloud quantum computers are becoming closer to reality, the concept of delegation of quantum computations and its verifiability is of central interest. Many models have been proposed, each with specific strengths and weaknesses. Here, we put forth a new model where the client trusts only its classical processing, makes no computational assumptions, and interacts with a quantum server in a single round. In addition, during a set-up phase, the client specifies the size $n$ of the computation and receives an untrusted, off-the-shelf (OTS) quantum device that is used to report the outcome of a single measurement. We show how to delegate polynomial-time quantum computations in the OTS model. This also yields an interactive proof system for all of QMA, which, furthermore, we show can be accomplished in statistical zero-knowledge. This provides the first relativistic (one-round), two-prover zero-knowledge proof system for QMA. As a proof approach, we provide a new self-test for n EPR pairs using only constant-sized Pauli measurements, and show how it provides a new avenue for the use of simulatable codes for local Hamiltonian verification. Along the way, we also provide an enhanced version of a well-known stability result due to Gowers and Hatami and show how it completes a common argument used in self-testing.
Mayawi Baba-Nalikant, Nor Athiyah Abdullah, Mohd Heikal Husin, Sharifah Mashita Syed-Mohamad ¡ 6 authors
This study aimed to investigate the relationships between knowledge, attitudes, and values in promoting zero-waste, pro-environmental behaviour among the university campus community and how technology plays its role. A survey instrument was developed from the findings of earlier focus group discussions and in-depth interviews, which were based on the adaptation and adoption of previous studies, especially Kollmuss and Agyemanâs 2002 Model of Pro-Environmental Behaviour and a modified Knowledge-Attitude-Practises Model. Three hundred ninety-three respondent samples from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Universiti Putra Malaysia, and Universiti Sains Malaysia were analysed for their insights regarding their vision of a Zero-Waste Campus using the Structural Equation Modelling approach. The results show positive relationships between the five studied variables and the proposed hypotheses. Knowledge and attitudes serve as moderating variables, enhancing the strength of the causal effects of the related relationships. As the results show good significance, proper planning for integrating the studied variables and the proposed zero-waste campus framework can be used by university management, other institutions, or national-level agencies to develop an environment-specific plan to promote zero-waste, pro-environmental behaviour.
Travis C. Cuvelier, Takashi Tanaka, Robert W. Heath
We propose an adaptive coding approach to achieve linear-quadratic-Gaussian (LQG) control with near-minimum bitrate prefix-free feedback. Our approach combines a recent analysis of a quantizer design for minimum rate LQG control with work on universal lossless source coding for sources on countable alphabets. In the aforementioned quantizer design, it was established that the quantizer outputs are an asymptotically stationary, ergodic process. To enable LQG control with provably near-minimum bitrate, the quantizer outputs must be encoded into binary codewords efficiently. This is possible given knowledge of the probability distributions of the quantizer outputs, or of their limiting distribution. Obtaining such knowledge is challenging; the distributions do not readily admit closed form descriptions. This motivates the application of universal source coding. Our main theoretical contribution in this work is a proof that (after an invertible transformation), the quantizer outputs are random variables that fall within an exponential or power-law envelope class (depending on the plant dimension). Using ideas from universal coding on envelope classes, we develop a practical, zero-delay version of these algorithms that operates with fixed precision arithmetic. We evaluate the performance of this algorithm numerically, and demonstrate competitive results with respect to fundamental tradeoffs between bitrate and LQG control performance.
âYou can not build in a Democracy a nation inside a nation of two antagonistic races. The future American must be an Anglo-Saxon or a Mulattoâ: with these words, Thomas Dixon Jr. registered the racist refrain of his 1902 novel, The Leopard's Spots.1 The book follows Charles Gaston, son of a dead Confederate soldier who ascends to the governorship of North Carolina and thwarts Reconstruction efforts designed to cultivate racially integrated government in the post-Civil War South. His mentor along the way is the Reverend John Durham, who imparts the book's mendacious central message: America was made by white people, and democracy must be governed by them alone.It is the summer of 2021, and I am reading Dixon for the first time. With my print-on-demand copy of The Leopard's Spots sitting on the kitchen table, I take in the news coverage about the battles over âcritical race theoryâ being waged at school board meetings, in state legislatures, and even in the halls of Congress.One skirmish in this latest culture war hits close to home. A colleague at the Air Force Academy, where I teach, has just published a Washington Post op-ed with the title, âI'm a professor at a U.S. military academy. Here's why I teach critical race theory.â The article strikes me as uncontroversial, but members of Congress have called for this professor's removal.2I turn back to Dixon's Durham: âYou can not build in a Democracy a nation inside a nation of two antagonistic races. The future American must be an Anglo-Saxon or a Mulatto.â What would the concerned congressmen make of that racial theory? Or, to ask the question another way: What does 1902 have to do with 2021? And what does Dixon's democracy have to do with ours?This meditationâpart journal entry, part essayâis my attempt at a reply. Though today we tend to think of them as opposites, white supremacy and democracy went together in the mind of Thomas Dixon. And although Dixon certainly was one of its most egregious expositors, that idea was hardly marginal in his own time. When Doubleday, Page & Company published The Leopard's Spots, the North Carolina-born lawyer, author, legislator, and preacher enjoyed a national platform. The novel sold so well that one in every eight Americans could own a copy.3 Members of the Black press quickly condemned the book, with one paper calling the novel âpossibly the most abusive workâ about the âNegro in America published up to date.â4 Sutton Griggs, himself a preacher and author, penned a novel of his own that countered Dixon's distortions, particularly images of sexually aggressive Black men threatening white women. The Hindered Hand, which the African American Griggs published in 1905, concludes by imagining a dead Dixon and memorializes the man who âsaid and did all things which he deemed necessary to leave behind him the greatest heritage of hatred the world has ever known.â âHumanity claims him not as one of her children,â declares Griggs's epitaph.5If his ideas weren't still so relevant more than a century later, Dixon surely would be better left to lie in the fictional grave that Griggs dug for him decades in advance of his actual death in 1946. But with the ongoing efforts to regulate what children learn about America in public schools, and state legislation designed to make it more difficult for people of color to vote, Dixon remains a detestable but necessary figure to engage. For he recognized, even as he ruled impossible, the conditions that a thriving multiracial democracy demands. Up until a few months ago, I had never read Thomas Dixon's novels, despite the fact that I hold a doctorate in American literature and my research focuses on the era in which his popularity was at a high point. Once the stuff of bestsellers and school reading lists, his voluminous fictional output is not widely assigned or read (outside of avowed white supremacist circles). This is surely a good thing. In a climate where writers like Griggs, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Charles W. Chesnutt, and so many other women and authors of color from the Reconstruction era are still struggling to assume their rightful place in our too narrow canon of American literature, to say nothing of popular consciousness, it makes little sense to allow Dixon any significant airtime.Still, as I paged through The Leopard's Spots and the two sequels that constitute Dixon's trilogy on Reconstruction, I came to realize that Dixon's ideas were already very much present in the atmosphere, even if his name has dropped off our radar.6 As I was reading the novel's profession about the impossibility of achieving a functioning democracy that is composed of more than one race, the legislature of Dixon's home state of North Carolina, where The Leopard's Spots is set, was ratifying House Bill 324. Just one instance of nationwide efforts to eliminate the teaching of critical thinking about race in public schools, the bill stipulates that âpublic school units shall not promoteâ that âone race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex,â among other concepts.7As an astute Twitter exchange made clear, the people most likely to advance such concepts are the heirs of Thomas Dixon Jr.âmodern-day white supremacists.8 If it were enacted in good faith, that is, such legislation would only force the hands of someone who might want to teachâas doctrineâthe arguments of The Leopard's Spots.Of course, these legislative attempts have nothing to do with critical race theory, a body of scholarly knowledge that elected officials and citizens who support such moves routinely invoke as their motive. Countering a critique that has no identifiable target, as Ibram X. Kendi has written, constitutes a maddening monologue that makes democratic dialogue all but impossible.9But that is only part of the problem. The situation grows more troubling if we consider how the anti-CRT conversation has functioned as what Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham has called a âmetalanguage of race.â10 Writing in the 1990s, the African American historian used the phrase to draw attention to the reality that talking about race in America often happens by way of shorthand and euphemism, phrases whose racial referents are seemingly obscured, but in practice are all too clear (think: âcorrectâ vs. âincorrectâ English or a âgoodâ vs. âbadâ neighborhood.) Today, we might say that controversy about âCritical Race Theoryâ has become a metalanguage for controversies about the idea of America we want to cultivate in our systems of education and for the story of the country we want to tell in everyday conversations with fellow citizens.Who counts as an âAmericanâ? How do we narrate an honest history, confronting both the good and the bad of a shared past, as we work to build a future?11 What role should the federal government play in securing the equality of all citizens regardless of race? These were the very questions Dixon was askingâand answering, in the most limiting waysâas he wrote about the nineteenth-century effort at Reconstruction, which, for the African American intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois, âinvolved the very foundations of American democracy.â12To put it another way: nowhere does the name of Thomas Dixon Jr. appear in House Bill 324, which the North Carolina governor ultimately vetoed.13 (Other states press on with similar efforts).14 Yet the story Dixon told in The Leopard's Spots has hardly disappeared, even if we don't know its plot. For a brief period, Thomas Dixon served in the very body that drafted House Bill 324. Were the author of The Leopard's Spots part of that debate, he might have taken special interest in the twelfth provision, which reads: âAll Americans are not created equal and are not endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.â North Carolina legislators wanted to prohibit the teaching of such a concept: âpublic school units shall not promote that all Americans are not created equal.â15 That they made the point by adopting an awkward double negative construction, rather than simply affirming the central, positive, commitment to equality in the Declaration of Independence, is revealing for a bill that draws on that very word to justify its actions.16In fact, separated from the qualifier, this twelfth prohibited concept seems lifted from a chapter of Dixon's novel. En route to his rise to political power, Charles Gaston leads a movement of white men who unite against what they understand as the âdominationâ of Black Americans in public office. The group drafts a âsecond Declaration of Independence,â which announces that âthe government of North Carolina was established by a race of pioneer white freemen for white men and it shall remain in the hands of freemen.â17 Gaston and his collaborators deploy force to make this statement a reality, and thereby secure white power. Perhaps thinking of this scene, the African American paper the Washington Bee remarked in its September review that a chief âobjectâ of the book was to âannihilate the Jeffersonian doctrineâ articulated in the real Declaration.18That was precisely what happened four years earlier, in the historical event on which Dixon drew in part for this episode, and which Charles W. Chesnutt dramatized in his brilliant novel The Marrow of Tradition. In 1898, a group of white men in Wilmington, North Carolina, staged a violent coup that ousted the interracial government in the Black-majority city. To communicate their aims, they issued a âWhite Declaration of Independence.â Ignoring the commitments to liberty and equality guaranteed by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, they enacted their own story of the national founding and concluded that âAnglo-Saxonâ rule was at the heart of the Constitution and must be at the heart of the national future. âOur eyes are open to the fact that we must act now or leave our descendants to a fate too gloomy to be borne,â they declared.19 Dixon, like the architects of the Wilmington coup, understood quite clearly that democracy requires equality. In fact, one of the simplest ways to grasp his vision of white supremacy is to say that it believes in and seeks equalityâbut for the white race only. As Koritha Mitchell has formulated the matter in another context, âNot White? Then you can't be equal.â20Startling as it may seem, that kind of thinking allowed Dixon to maintain that he was âone ofâ African Americansâ âbest friends,â someone who wanted them to succeedâbut to recognize they could never do so in the United States.21 (The comment prompted one Black writer to wish that âsome Negro gathering could showâ Dixon âhow his friendship . . . is appreciated by giving him a good coating of tar and feathers.â)22It was also this thinking that motivated one of the type-scenes of Thomas Dixon's fiction, the idea that progress for Black Americans necessarily meant regress for white Americans. âYou have suffered,â declares Tim Shelby, one of Dixon's Black characters in The Leopard's Spots. âNow let the white man suffer.â âIf white men want to live in the South they can become our servants,â Shelby announces to a group of African American listeners at a political meeting.23The speech, I've discovered, was not Dixon's invention. The lines were spoken by Henry Black, a Norfolk, Virginia, freedman who in October 1867 joined with other African American residents to resist removal when the land on which they had been building a life was returned to the Confederate William Taylor.24 It was the local paper, the racist and anti-Republican Norfolk Virginian, that first reported on the episode. When newspapers from New York City to San Francisco drew on this coverage, they ran it under headlines warning of the dangers of âNegro ascendancyâ and âsupremacy,â and marshaled it as proof that an âinferior race,â incapable of self-government, was being controlled by âunprincipled white demagogues.â25This reporting probably stood as Dixon's source: the scene in The Leopard's Spots is nearly a word-for-word transcription of the newspaper coverage of Black's 1867 speech. Dixon, like the reporters for these white-run papers, could only tell one story about the events in Norfolk. A reversal of the conditions of racial subjugationâwhere Black Americans now force white Americans to labor for themâwas the only way that Dixon could fathom equality of the races. The notion that racial progress is a zero-sum game stands as Dixon's most abiding and insidious legacies.26But there is, I think, another story to be told about this scene. That story exists amid newspaper articles and government documents, reports by Freedmen's Bureau agents and letters penned by Norfolk African Americans. These are the layers that compose the historical record of what really happened in the Norfolk, Virginia, in 1867: a history that came down to us through Thomas Dixon's fictionâhis lies about Reconstruction that became the truth.Who was Henry Black, the man behind Dixon's Tim Shelby? When Black spoke to the freedpeople of Taylor Farm on that fall day in 1867, what did he want them to see? His speech made clear the revolution in the social order that would be necessary for the formerly enslaved to become genuinely free people, even if he didn't literally mean that white people should serve African Americans. And even if he did, who could blame him for hoping that another reversal of fortune might keep his community on the land they deemed was their own, and for organizing to make that hope material?I will try to find out, if I can. Doing so will require me to engage more with Thomas Dixon and the white supremacist ideology that animated his thinking and much of the historiography of Reconstruction of which Dixon's writing was part and parcel.Strangely, this is unfamiliar terrain for me. I'm used to writing about Sutton Griggs and his African American contemporaries, the authors who sought to contestâdirectly and actively in Grigg's caseâDixon's story. But writing about white writers like Dixon, as a white scholar myself, feels different. âWhite American literature . . . is arguably the most prominent and most problematic of the traditions that involve raceâ in American literary history, claims John Ernest. And for that reason, âit cannot be ignored in favor of more focused and more ultimately uplifting stories.â27I take this message as if addressed directly to me. I want to distance myself from Dixon's extremism, but it's better to be honest about the traction his story about the possibility of racial equality in a democracy holds. Americans, especially white Americans, must work to reject his conclusions. At the same time, we must frame the stakes of our ongoing discussions about white supremacy, anti-racism, and CRT in the terms that Dixon deployed; only by formulating a language that links equality and democracy can we construe the full significance of the arguments and understand why talking about them really matters.28 As the political theorist Danielle Allen has put it, âThe simple fact of the matter is that the world has never built a multiethnic democracy in which no particular ethnic group is in the majority and where political equality, social equality and economies that empower all have been achieved.â29The novels of Thomas Dixon testify to the truth of that statement. As we engage in the novel project of making America a multiracial democracy in a moment that some have called a âThird Reconstruction,â may Dixon's writings also show us the thinking to avoid if we want both his nameâand the notions they promoteâto truly disappear from the story of America.
BILL CLINTON WAS THE ONLY US PRESIDENT to visit East St. Louis. Clinton made two trips, the first in 1992 and the second in 1999. Clinton was alert to East St. Louis's visible place on any list of American cities that suffered high unemployment, shuttered factories, deadly pollution levels, profound poverty, widespread drug usage, and violent crime. Still more, as Clinton acknowledged and as any routine newspaper reader would have recognized, deep racial animosities informed virtually every aspect of residentsâ lives and politics in East St. Louis and in cities like it. Profound economic distress and ingrained racial anger animated politics in similar places such as Camden, New Jersey, and Youngstown, Ohio. Like in East St. Louis, bankers, corporate executives, small retailers, repair shops, and white, middle-income households had abandoned those citiesâ neighborhoods and schools starting after World War II and extending to the end of the century and beyond.During both trips, journalists included in Clinton's entourage wrote positive reports focused on promises to revitalize the local economy. In fact, however, each visit lasted only a few hours, and each comprised one part of multi-city tours. Local officials had played no part in formulating Clinton's economic development proposals. The brevity of those stops suggests that Clinton never ranked East St. Louis or its leaders at or near the top of his legislative agenda. Nor in fact did Clinton bring immediate financial resources to hard-pressed residents or the city's treasury. During his first trip, Clinton promised restored economic growth for the nation including places like East St. Louis. During his second, Clinton had legislation pending in Congress that promised a modest amount of cash alongside tax benefits for business leaders willing to invest in the nation's depreciated cities. Under those austere circumstances, not one or even a dozen presidential visits could have restarted East St. Louis on a path toward revived investments, additional jobs, fewer buried pollutants, cleaner air, or a modicum of racial harmony. Once the president departed for the next stop, moreover, the city's mayors such as Gordon D. Bush (1991â1999) and Debra A. Powell (1999â2003) lacked the cash, credit, political networks, and administrative capacity that were prerequisite to launching East St. Louis's mostly impoverished residents on a path toward a modest prosperity.Clinton and other political leaders valued East St. Louis and similar cities as model workshops for the idea that markets could be made to substitute for direct financial aid. President Ronald W. Reagan and Representative Jack F. Kemp had bequeathed that idea to Clinton, who took it up as his own. Our study of Kemp and Reagan's innovative policies and Clinton's visits to East St. Louis focuses attention on a once-thriving Illinois city during the decades that political leaders directed the nation's political economy away from old-fashioned pursuits such as steel and aluminum manufacturing, hog packing, and heavily unionized railroading and trucking and toward internationalizing bank corporations, financial derivatives, soaring office towers, corporate takeovers, and weekend holidays devoted to shopping, travel, and leisure. Reagan, Kemp, and Clinton, however, explained these developments as natural extensions of markets at work, which clearly was never the case. Saddled with that language, however, policies aimed at creating markets had to produce measurable outcomes in places like East St. Louis. They failed to do so.To explain these developments, we start with Clinton's two visits. Next, we direct our attention to President Reagan, Representative Kemp, Illinois governor James R. Thompson, and to the East St. Louis mayors who inherited the task of converting endless talk about markets and innovative policies into investments, jobs, and the provision of basic urban services such as police and sewage disposal. Presidents Reagan and Clinton and other top officials such as Kemp and Thompson spoke as the state's and nation's chief economic officers. One theme that emerges clearly is the vast disjuncture between their uplifting pronouncements and soaring policy goals and problems such as inadequate revenues that neither market talk nor modest, market-oriented policies could remedy in forlorn East St. Louis. And as such, we are not studying the triumph or failure of markets but the way in which presidents, federal officials, and Illinois governor policy that took of the which East St. Louis officials and residents each as for Clinton and A. his for spoke and to in of at the East St. Louis the as Clinton to the high it which at that for and to the economy of the economic of as Clinton and and with journalists for stops in cities such as was as however, like East St. Louis, was city that had decades only to a of as part of the of and in and of cities like and East St. Louis were to economic their In as of unemployment, and a of economic the at East St. Louis's that at a and a promised of and even in cities like and East St. Louis, for Clinton to to his President W. economic Clinton of his that it could be and idea is that it could be on Clinton, in his second presidential made to East St. Louis. visit similar to the local officials, and to Clinton's or to the president of the in however, such as of and top to Clinton's their to invest in places like East St. Louis. the of in East St. Louis the city as a in the a East St. Louis and Clinton and other for the to a Clinton a of for local even one of Clinton's top economic East St. Louis's growth the as economic in our like the that federal and officials made to impoverished of East St. Louis's economic a was Like his 1992 Clinton's in East St. Louis including a to of East St. on a in that Clinton's as the nation's first president to his the mostly American residents to attention at the of office and business executives, or One of Clinton's that East St. Louis residents of their the who the in St. Louis. Clinton for the of the racial that had two a few in Illinois and one to East St. Louis residents about the of those who suffered anger and Nor did that in decades local business few or comprised part of that for economic In the city's at but in two to Clinton's first During the and one of the city's residents away as their East St. those who were and did not in the local to the that up to Clinton's and the East St. Louis was impoverished in as a of impoverished residents in similar cities and the after Clinton's first visit during the of of were a economic the had to and the St. Louis's was of that to East St. Louis, at a in in 1992 or in the and fact of East St. Louis's and economy at the of each Clinton have for East St. Louis to a local a and Clinton's is the first in Clinton's and his to end racial the for immediate and in their lives and In the near however, Clinton, or any to a and place for in the economic that one Clinton's visit and included no of vast federal for East St. Louis. The was the with Clinton the of Clinton to a to invest in and similar the investments, the would to additional and of growth as however, the president of that of in had promised to invest in the in was a that in for federal legislation to the to bank that and in and financial to the however, cities and could never a of business and jobs, in East St. similar during that in East St. Louis, Clinton his of the In of the US Congress and President the The to in cities and their were And Clinton's top bank on bank to those of the Clinton to his East St. Louis the in for the was that such as the of of a with a toward their to had financial and political for the and other that in cities like East St. Louis. Clinton and the nation's top additional had a of bank as a in economic In only a few after his first in East St. Louis, the a with of the nation's top bankers, and business leaders in federal that Clinton of his and mostly in to with the economic growth that would bank Clinton's 1992 to in was similar to his to East St. Louis's hard-pressed residents in 1999. is no and in fact neither the nor to any to the as and impoverished as to the local made it that and residents were for East St. of decades of Clinton never to or East St. Louis's mostly residents to the of and In Clinton's market at as the top like and of executives, as a in their a of as American urban politics was not about and like Clinton their with market They did to their to the and the to and growth into the In its urban of market talk to policies that and and one to every Illinois and in the of Illinois the of a for In a similar Clinton and his top growth aimed at about cities and developments did not with the political and in East St. Louis. and business could never of their city a a place in the as a or like to that market talk into urban policies aimed at places like East St. Louis was never a East St. Louis business and political leaders their in Camden, New Jersey, and cities the lacked financial resources and in and political In leaders in and New to the cash and that were prerequisite to creating of and with bank and in St. Louis, with its visible and the city officials and business leaders had to each the to to to a a and a those St. Louis's hard-pressed leaders to corporate the of and on their as a in for East St. Louis's of market talk had to of abandoned in every and who lacked with in St. Louis, and other his East St. Louis Clinton's market talk as his markets that in the Clinton with a of the way those markets were to of the would invest one Clinton at the would that a tax valued at The Clinton of the tax credit, on the for only Clinton's markets like other federal such as to to During a few in the markets the attention of journalists and a small of to the of in the nation's such as East St. Louis. as Clinton made to his the markets did not in had in East St. Louis to bring to his markets In the that any Clinton legislative a of in Clinton was his for a US New Clinton his to President presidential of Clinton's one or both we not Clinton's to the that during his in office and his to that growth on a in Clinton's of impoverished to about his and for economic growth on and a idea about for the In fact, however, Clinton's markets was a in of Congress and not a of tax to Still more, Congress had not Clinton in which East St. Louis was to fact, Clinton in East St. Louis with During the failure to the markets and the comprised only two of the leaders in East St. Louis to a of the federal to not even President Ronald Reagan's market talk was to legislation to start East St. Louis's toward a modest Like Clinton, Reagan had focused on the of could of that in these would a federal tax the would and to jobs, and a in on a in Reagan the and their for these that of Under the Reagan each top officials in the US of and would between and for as on such as economic and the of In Reagan's of the with but direct federal tax was a tax which few or as East St. Louis was on Reagan's list of first alongside Camden, New Jersey, and Illinois cities such as and Reagan's list as In Reagan but of Congress and business leaders about the as explain legislative that the idea had and urban with in policies to a of and in their cities and In mayors of and other cities to to with Reagan and his pending in like East St. Louis, were During the next Illinois business and political with and in their the Illinois business Reagan officials in to and other federal of was a spoke about steel and In to in a of the Illinois of and a in East St. Louis to explain the to business In a the the at the end of the for cities. leaders of cities with high their with Reagan to of One those cities as the and East St. Louis ranked that The was on to however, not even President Reagan was to of Congress to his to of the Illinois of in with to be in each Like Reagan's the Illinois of tax and fewer in the cities that The legislation a local political leaders to the state's as one of the The East St. Louis of the city's and of and of the In and the had to included the city in their In the to with its path to economic local officials and any that was at officials the of a between and the East St. Louis the city in the that would be East St. economic development in the the federal up in Congress and with about both the federal and the East St. Louis their have to have a the of to the legislation of in the the and urban In the of the idea one to that included a to police and and to In the who a and two including one in a did that the city lacked to as part of a the federal to and the East St. Louis officials on federal in the of to the of and such American in cities as in and even in a city business of levels, and a that was inadequate to police and In those circumstances, or any in for East St. Louis's Illinois governor James R. Thompson East St. Louis's as one of cities to the first of with two additional in including the of the city's and steel In only the had from the steel corporations, the cities that made the but did In a East St. Louis the in a the state's cities and two of few in East St. Louis and to problems that the of had In the fact that leaders small cities were problems have the modest capacity of a of officials to and of the East St. Louis in about these were to have attention to their failure to pending legislation local Nor did the state's legislation financial to East St. Louis and the other cities for the factories, and that up and and abandoned and city's racial animosities comprised in the city's Representative St. about the of from neither of talk about the capacity to growth nor the of legislation of was the politics in which East St. Louis every reports about the for a place on list of from In their not local business and political had in those in for a the in benefits for urban In similar a with on the modest in cities. in and of jobs, and the to steel jobs, local officials could not from its as And in other the growth virtually to that city officials was a place on the list of however, the modest of development in the other had a business to East St. East St. Louis's first to two to the East and East was a it would of of into and with on Once up and moreover, the would of the in the St. Louis including and the into the into a like the the amount of in the In the those were to East St. Louis, with its as a the East St. Louis's air, and residents had one of the city had lacked to repair a sewage into the for a And in to that his city's as their in had the as as a the the the legislation the In however, the to the politics of and on his the was never to the who and mostly American had willing to the that to cities like East St. Louis. had a in in as a to in East St. Louis. The to a and a the the would jobs, a the of in East St. Louis. were not to and a of in the in the city's the each in the in the city's including a aluminum that had its East St. Louis his in with a of the state's of and to a St. and to a as in to the our in the near a of city leaders in for the East St. Louis was only city to additional During the next two in the failed to The for that was and local leaders the US those promised valued at and the of the of to one of the for the first In a small of one would bring of to East St. Louis. in however, at a to a in East St. Louis. In the a a both and as for a and a that however, to one or even both of their East St. Louis to the Still more, had not to of tax their in one included legislation that cities to tax East St. Louis would any in tax revenues that took place at the with the were about in the the and about the had not business leaders to to East St. Louis's its and its to basic urban such as sewage The market its about had animated President Reagan and business and political leaders at every in Illinois and was as on to the city's in Jack Kemp and other market were in the political presidential the idea and Kemp had for a presidential and was a for the In his Kemp a and at a of racial in and Kemp for Kemp about politics and economic about in as a of Congress a near that Kemp with of Congress and were to to business additional jobs, and every In Kemp legislation to the in high a of and of unemployment, a that journalists about and and his and on their a In Kemp his for the presidential the were like the a in Kemp would clearly be a Kemp the to W. his in his to as of at a to Bush economic growth and the to their a market talk the Kemp, had a from which to to have a in the Kemp a of mayors in on the was the one who a of in the and In Kemp, in office only a few in with the and the the of the federal Kemp, as in that the would to business to the federal tax would the in the of and tax the the of included in his to of two and of Congress had legislation to Congress in a In and to a for East St. Louis leaders to federal for In the after the Bush legislation that failed to cash for a additional in after Bush and Kemp took Clinton and had made a economy their Congress to like the legislation and administrative at a Clinton's had a of cities to federal that Congress the of and the and visible of urban such as the for in Clinton's Congress had the of each to urban who city officials or urban was to that such a would be for that business to invest in and and in a city like East St. Still East St. Louis in and had to it the city's took place the of the East St. Louis a in the of Illinois as part of the state's had to that to and and St. Louis into a into the In the city officials to the city's to the of of in 1992 and extending for the next Gordon D. East St. Louis's with the for including business development in the federal development had not in the city during that a in Bush In with St. Louis to a for a of St. Louis had failed to one of the in other cities had cities the for his with depreciated East St. Louis, to his city's of a for his the positive that with a city to alongside a of business and political one toward East St. Louis into such a in of the of Bush a and with the of St. Louis would of a small and East St. Louis on its way toward as a city corporate towers, racial and a The Bush was we have to economic and the in East St. to that however, the a on the to East St. Louis, about of the city's The and its of and had not to East St. Louis and the that were urban leaders in cities such as and had the visible place the or to in the the moreover, of the with development had not the tax and not the and A. place on the had places a city on and a was to a way toward on the In a to East St. Louis's place in that Bush to Clinton during a his with a was in President Bush and to the in of the in with ranked second like East St. Louis, was a city with a American of St. Louis the in his spoke about a The of had place on the idea of a the cities to and one in federal and tax during the next of the in a small near East St. Louis, the of their at a for on and to the St. Louis for that of about and failed to that Congress had not to the nation's The Clinton East St. Louis, those in the US those East St. Louis's Debra A. had few with which to like up in East St. Louis and was a in high and at the of on city in one of first as to the city with a of with to American to In the of the next to the Powell in a its the was the first in East St. Louis in of the the the of our a the city of St. Powell spoke about a and a with to the but near East St. Louis, would the that in as model for as did a small as a place for to and to during do Powell East St. would business to East St. Louis, Powell were the city's residents would for 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shops, and officials in fact to financial in the President Clinton promised to East St. Louis to restored mostly the old-fashioned idea of revived in tax to and to cities like East St. Louis. for the of and of had the idea that would to as a in market the was to about measurable on one in the to a to a like East St. Louis to in a that any business was in a of and that cities and and the and the Clinton in fact legislation creating the American the of like and the and the of and in East St. Louis and similar and had departed those or In the to for American and to the of in the East St. Louis, moreover, was not a on the of the had for East St. Louis's leaders were with the to their way to The of in Reagan, Clinton, Illinois East St. Louis and other American leaders to the and of to the of cash or the of East St. Louis that city Clinton had residents next to were the political of who and market American residents of abandoned were to the of tax and cash to and was a have in East St. Louis, a local in a after Clinton's the Clinton spoke in was in the the had in at the included for and a of at that to and a that tax to the of the a local the had with to a the next to and the the and the as place for to local business was the to East St. Louis's into a a office and shopping, and about of the city's In East St. Louis, the between and development was a old-fashioned the East St. Louis had a with the and to federal cash, the and for in one it to one or two on the East St. Louis and economy. even a like the and resources to a few to East St. Louis's as a and place to do During in the of a a in East St. Louis in that not only have any but to The city's and the for growth in the In in to a that to widespread and in New the US of the that East St. Louis as In local like Powell and like had their on the as a growth the had a place for a and it was next to a city into the St. Louis was a city that households not one in the business and white, East St. Louis. urban who in and mostly white, never St. Louis or East St. Louis as cities to for a first after St. Louis, a city that had vast and business starting in the could not to East St. Louis. the of jobs, and from East St. Louis the the at East St. Louis's of racial anger and Clinton's two tax and and political market talk
Ring Confidential Transactions (RingCT) is a protocol associated with the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero and is used to hide the transaction amount from the third party while still providing the confidentiality of the hide transaction. With the Pederson commitment scheme, ring signature, and other cryptographic constructions, RingCT plays a major role in making the transactions of Monero private. As a privacy coin, Monero has the unique property of fungibility in the cryptocurrency market from the protocols implemented. These protocols provided opportunities and challenges for its future. In this paper, the version of the protocol implemented in Monero is first inspected, including the commitment to zero and the range proof. Then, two critical cryptographic constructions used by RingCT 2.0, the accumulator and the signature of knowledge, are introduced. Finally, the influence of RingCT and other privacy features and the current situation of privacy coin is discussed.
Abstract A â1-out-of-nâ oblivious transfer (OT) protocol involves two participants: a sender, who provides a set of items as input, and a receiver. The protocol guarantees that the receiver gets exactly one of the items of the input set, while the sender is unable to determine which. Priced OT (POT) protocols further allow each item of the input set to be assigned a price in such a way that, after a proper execution of the protocol, the receiver gets the requested item if and only if the corresponding sum of money has been paid. In this paper, we present a construction which takes a â1-out-of-nâ OT protocol and transform it into a POT one. Moreover, the resulting system is unlinkable in the sense that the sender is unable to determine whether two executions of the protocol were run by the same receiver or not. When compared to existing unlinkable POT protocols, our construction offers a lower conceptual complexity as it does not involve the use of zero-knowledge proofs.