Exorbitant costs have complicated the journey for adventurers traversing these Shadowy Woods. The Waters of Memory, once muddied, are now made clear by the filter of 1559, demonstrating that they lack the depth to support life.
Tales recount a civilization thriving on the bounty bestowed by DankShard, of colossal Roll-Ups thriving on verdant expanses of wholesome Data Blobs, each sustaining their own intricate nutrient structures.
To invoke DankShard, our mentors direct us towards a Ritual. All participants from the realms of Ether and beyond are invited to partake. Each will contribute their distinctive element to the collective, thereby shining light on the path ahead. 🕯
Overview
The KZG Ritual is an orchestrated public ceremony designed to lay a cryptographic foundation for Ethereum’s scaling initiatives such as EIP-4844 (also known as proto-danksharding). Such events are often referred to as “Trusted Setups,” famously utilized by Zcash to establish the chain’s privacy attributes. Nonetheless, they can also be harnessed to enhance scaling processes, which Ethereum intends to implement.
Proto-danksharding necessitates a novel cryptographic system: KZG Commitments. These will produce a “structured reference string” (SRS), which is essential for the commitments’ functionality. An SRS remains secure as long as at least one participant in the ritual successfully conceals their secret.
It is a multi-party ritual: every contributor generates a secret and performs calculations to intertwine it with prior contributions. Subsequently, the result is made public and forwarded to the following contributor. The final outcome will be integrated into an upcoming upgrade to facilitate the scaling of the Ethereum network.
Source: Vitalik’s blog “How do trusted setups work?”
For further insights, Carl Beekhuizen’s Devcon Talk provides a comprehensive and detailed explanation. Alternatively, consult the links available in the Resources repository.
Why it is significant
Your involvement carries substantial implications that extend beyond the technical deliverables of the Ritual itself and the scaling solutions it would facilitate.
Here, the wider Ethereum community is presented with a unique chance to directly influence the core protocol’s evolution. Indeed, the credibility of the Ritual now and its ongoing preservation into the future relies on numerous contributions from varied and distinct avenues.
As we develop our infrastructure, we remind ourselves of our aspirations for Ethereum to provide to the world: accessible protocols that anyone can utilize or contribute towards. This is participation in the practice of collective creation, upholding our community’s values. Our invocation signifies new relevance for an evolving world.
How to engage
There are four primary methods for the Ethereum community to assist in constructing this essential infrastructure (ranked by technical complexity, from minimal to maximal):
- Browser interfaces
- create and contribute your own randomness using your preferred web browser
- The primary source for information and participation is ceremony.ethereum.org. Ensure you are at this URL and not a different one! There could be phishing or impersonation attempts
- can take place through the hosted interface or via IPFS
- participants must provide an Ethereum address (which has executed at least 4 transactions as of 2023/01/13) or a Github account to mitigate spam contributions.
- Command line implementations
- if you are proficient in using a command line, explore some of the CLI implementations to contribute from your local device
- Generate entropy in a distinctive way
- You may create some randomness using an unusual & creative method and utilize one of the previously mentioned methods to contribute to the ceremony. (If, for any reason, you require additional time for your contribution, contact ceremony@ethereum.org)
- for example, in 2018 during the Zcash Sapling ceremony, Ryan Pierce and Andrew Miller employed a geiger counter and an artifact from Chernobyl to produce entropy while in an airplane – link
- Funding available: Apply here
- Develop your own implementation
- Significant effort has been dedicated to simplifying the process of creating your own implementation for the ritual, (some have managed it within a single afternoon). Refer to the detailed ceremony specifications.
- If you truly wish to assure yourself that the secret has not been compromised, contemplate devising your own BLS12-381 implementation. You will only need G1 and G2 integer multiplication, and incorrect contributions will simply be discarded by the Sequencer, ensuring you cannot harm the ritual.
- If, for any reason, you require additional time for your contribution, reach out to ceremony@ethereum.org
- Resources available: Submit application here
Schedule
The initiative has been under development since mid-2022: delve into the complete timeline here. The primary focus areas consisted of executing the fundamental cryptographic elements, the Sequencer, and developing an interface to facilitate browser-based involvement. These initiatives witnessed extensive ecosystem participation, with inputs from numerous teams and individuals: this includes several teams from the Ethereum Foundation (Protocol Support, Privacy & Scaling Explorations (PSE), DevOps, Eth.org, and Research), Worldcoin, and independent contributors (names listed below!).
The initial contribution phase will span two months, commencing Friday the 13th until March 13th, 2023. Afterwards, a distinct contribution window will be established for custom implementations and unique entropy generation, which may necessitate further assistance.
Once both periods conclude, the Sequencer will revert to welcoming general contributions until EIP-4844 is prepared to be scheduled for a network upgrade.
At this stage, the Sequencer will cease to accept new contributions and generate its final output. There will be at least one public validation to confirm that this result is correct – individuals are also encouraged to verify this using simple scripts such as this one.
Common Questions
Here are a few additional inquiries that individuals often have.
Do I need to have signed up beforehand to participate?
Nope! You only require an Ethereum address that has conducted a minimum of 4 transactions prior to Jan 13, 2023.
How long does it take to engage?
Engaging itself is very swift, taking less than a minute, but waiting for your turn may take longer. All individuals trying to contribute enter a lobby together, and the next contributor is chosen randomly.
What must happen for the ceremony to fail?
The ceremony operates under a “1-of-N” trust model, signifying that only one participant in the entire ceremony needs to keep their secret input undisclosed for the whole process to remain secure. Therefore, to undermine it, every participant would have to collude to extract their secret and recombine it, or there must be a flaw in every single implementation.
View the complete list of FAQs at ceremony.ethereum.org.
And a tremendous acknowledgment to Nico Serrano, Geoff Lamperd, Chiali, and Takamichi Tsutsumi from Privacy & Scaling Explorations, Remco Bloemen, Marcin Kostrzewa, Grzegorz Świrski and Philipp Sippl from Worldcoin, Rafael Matias, and Parithosh Jayanthi from EF DevOps, as well as Kevaundray Wedderburn, Marius Van Der Wijden, Daniel Knopik, Ignacio Hagopian, Antonio Sanso and Paul Wackerow among many others for their remarkable contributions to facilitate this Ceremony.