Benedikt Bünz

Benedikt Bünz is Co-Founder, chief scientist at Espresso Systems, a PhD student in the Applied Cryptography Group at Stanford. In my research I generally focus on the crypto(graphy) of crypto(currencies). I’ve worked on proofs of solvencies, randomness beacons, light clients, confidential transactions and zero-knowledge proofs. Bulletproofs are short non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs that require no trusted setup. A bulletproof can be used to convince a verifier that an encrypted plaintext is well formed. For example, it can prove that an encrypted number is in a given range, without revealing anything else about the number. Compared to SNARKs, Bulletproofs require no trusted setup. However, verifying a bulletproof is more time consuming than verifying a SNARK proof.