Zcash Ceremony

This is the story of of the Zcash Multi-Party Computation Ceremony.

Zcash’s zero-knowledge proofs rely on a set of public parameters which allow users to construct and verify private transactions. Due to cryptographic limitations, these parameters must be generated in a setup phase: some random numbers are sampled (which we refer to as the “toxic waste”) which are then used to construct the parameters.

After the setup phase (aka “The Ceremony”), the toxic waste must be destroyed to prevent counterfeiting of Zcash.

Further resources:

Tech overview – https://z.cash/technology/paramgen.html
Denver station “Phone Anomaly” footage – https://archive.org/details/ThePhoneAnomalyDuringTheZcashCeremonyDenverStation
A multi-party protocol for constructing the public parameters of the Pinoccio zk-SNARK (whitepaper) – https://github.com/zcash/mpc/blob/master/whitepaper.pdf

Accounts from ceremony participants:
Zooko Wilcox – https://z.cash/blog/the-design-of-the-ceremony.html & https://twitter.com/zooko/status/789884465505939456 & https://archive.org/download/zcash-denver-2016-10-22-images
Peter Todd – https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trusted-setup-ceremony
Peter Van Valkenburgh – https://gist.github.com/valkenburgh/8cf1d1e0a93daff5f051def361d9722d
Andrew Miller – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfFLvtkzau8 & https://twitter.com/socrates1024/status/790252887658168320

Account from journalist observing Denver station – http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/the-crazy-security-behind-the-birth-of-zcash

Full credits:

MUSIC:
ARTIST – The Insider
TRACK – Tension is Rising
ALBUM – All’s Fair in Love of Wax
LABEL – Cheshire Records
MEMBERS – Jonah Dempcy
[Accessed from Free Music Archive http://freemusicarchive.org/ ]
All’s Fair in Love of Wax by The Insider is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

VIDEO and STILL IMAGES:
[CrtFlicker_1
https://www.videvo.net/video/analog-crt-monitor-flicker/4255
Fence_Traffic_H264_Videvo
https://www.videvo.net/video/fence-traffic-time-lapse/2958
BadTvOutput_1.mp4
https://www.videvo.net/video/bad-tv-output/4248
NycTraffic.mp4
https://www.videvo.net/video/nyc-traffic-time-lapse-night/4179
AUTHOR:
Beachfront
AUTHOR WEBSITE:
http://www.beachfrontbroll.com

moskva.mov
https://www.videvo.net/video/moscow-timelapse/2991
mongfolija2
https://www.videvo.net/video/ulan-bator/3063
AUTHOR:
JureKreft
AUTHOR WEBSITE:
http://fixmedia.si/

Nosy_Be_Madagascar.mov
https://www.videvo.net/video/madagascar-nosy-be-city-centre/4565
AUTHOR:
Toloncho

New York City Buildings-H264 75.mov
https://www.videvo.net/video/new-york-city-buildings/471
by Ecamcito

Hong Kong in Transition on Vimeo.mp4
https://vimeo.com/29825221
Author: Silvio Carrillo

EMIT__Connections_Plexus.mov
https://www.videvo.net/video/particle-motion-visualisation_plexus/4795
AUTHOR:
Joseph2
AUTHOR WEBSITE:
https://vimeo.com/hipnosia

-all under-
Creative Commons 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/]

Ljubljana_from_the_Castle.JPG
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ljubljana_from_the_Castle.JPG
Author: Husond
GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Additional footage from
Footage Firm, Inc.
https://www.videoblocks.com

and various authors
on http://www.videvo.net
under the VIDEVO STANDARD LICENSE

Opening and closing animations by Samuel De Tomasi – http://www.samdetomasi.com/

Ceremony images and video by Peter Todd, Andrew Miller, Peter Van Valkenberg, NCC Group, Nathaniel Kramer, and Zcash

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About The Author

Kane Dane