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You are missing something: the seller can see the program that evaluates the solution.


Of course, but if the seller has to manually inspect the program for every transaction, is this really all that useful?

There are a myriad of ways to leak timing information from something like this, and to mask them amongst legitimate-seeming computations.

It seems like if you're having to rely on manual program inspection, then you've already lost.


The amount of execution time is a simple public parameter of the system.

These schemes require reducing the verification program to a circuit in advance, so its execution time is already fixed by virtue of that translation.

(In practice the existing implementation is not using constant time cryptography; and so it could have timing/cache/EMI side-channels; but this is "just engineering")


Ah, of course, just fix the run time. I should have realized that. Thanks.

Nice work!




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