After topping developer activity charts in October, leaving Polkadot (DOT) and Hedera (HBAR) behind, Cardano (ADA) has presented concrete results of these efforts in the form of the newest research paper on its scaling solution Mithril, which it launched on the mainnet in July.
As it happens, Input Output Global (IOG) chief technical officer Romain Pellerin has offered a summary covering all the main points of the recently released ‘Mithril 2’ paper, while Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson expressed his pride over the “damn fine work” in his X post on October 31.
Mithril 2 is out. I’m very proud of this paper. It’s damn fine work https://t.co/wEVB0XspkB pic.twitter.com/AHULGuCMWI
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) October 31, 2023
Mithril 2 innovations
According to Pellerin, the paper brings “new cryptographic techniques to prove knowledge of a large dataset without revealing it entirely,” using “efficient and secure” methods. Indeed, the ‘Approximate Lower Bound Arguments’ (ALBAs), for instance, remove the need to show all digital signatures when multiple signatures from different people are present.
Specifically, he explained, “The core idea is that the prover reveals only a small sample of the dataset, chosen cleverly” to prevent cheating if the real dataset is small and ensure the honest prover succeeds when the real dataset is large.
“If the real dataset is small, it’s unlikely the sample could be constructed. This prevents cheating. If the real dataset is large, it’s likely at least one such sample exists. This ensures an honest prover succeeds.”
As Pellerin added, a gap between these two cases allows “very efficient schemes.” Furthermore, the ‘Telescope’ technique enables the prover “to recursively construct the sample efficiently,” and the study also analyzes a case of distributing the dataset “among many parties who collectively generate the proof.”
“The paper shows how ALBAs can be used for straight-line witness extraction in succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (SNARKs). By using an ALBA instead of a custom construction, the prover’s work can be reduced and shorter proofs obtained when extracting witnesses from SNARKs.”
Mithril and Cardano price
As a reminder, back in July, Cardano launched Mithril, a stake-based signature protocol with a goal to improve the efficiency of the node sync, increase decentralization through blockchain snapshot validation by multiple pools signing to attest to a specific certificate, and introduce an aggregator to create the certificate chains and deliver snapshots.
Elsewhere, the price of Cardano at press time stood at $0.2916, recording a 0.57% decline on the day but still holding onto the 3.07% gain across the past week and the advance of 8.56% on its monthly chart, as per the most recent information on November 1.
In the meantime, Cardano has recorded a massive increase in the activity of dormant holders of its token, recording the most active day since April 2022, whereas its ‘whales’ and ‘sharks’ have started to re-accumulate their ADA, demonstrating optimism in a future rally, as Finbold reported earlier.
Considering that Cardano had witnessed a brief price increase upon the launch of the Mithril protocol, advancing by more than 3% in a matter of hours and nearing the $0.32 level, the recent paper and further work on it could help Cardano grow its price in the future.
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