License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY 3.0)
When quoting this document, please refer to the following
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2020.5
URN: urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-116901
URL: http://dagstuhl.sunsite.rwth-aachen.de/volltexte/2020/11690/
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Ben-Sasson, Eli ; Goldberg, Lior ; Kopparty, Swastik ; Saraf, Shubhangi

DEEP-FRI: Sampling Outside the Box Improves Soundness

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LIPIcs-ITCS-2020-5.pdf (0.7 MB)


Abstract

Motivated by the quest for scalable and succinct zero knowledge arguments, we revisit worst-case-to-average-case reductions for linear spaces, raised by [Rothblum, Vadhan, Wigderson, STOC 2013]. The previous state of the art by [Ben-Sasson, Kopparty, Saraf, CCC 2018] showed that if some member of an affine space U is δ-far in relative Hamming distance from a linear code V - this is the worst-case assumption - then most elements of U are almost-δ-far from V - this is the average case. However, this result was known to hold only below the "double Johnson" function of the relative distance δ_V of the code V, i.e., only when δ < 1-(1-δ_V)^(1/4).
First, we increase the soundness-bound to the "one-and-a-half Johnson" function of δ_V and show that the average distance of U from V is nearly δ for any worst-case distance δ smaller than 1-(1-δ_V)^(1/3). This bound is tight, which is somewhat surprising because the one-and-a-half Johnson function is unfamiliar in the literature on error correcting codes.
To improve soundness further for Reed Solomon codes we sample outside the box. We suggest a new protocol in which the verifier samples a single point z outside the box D on which codewords are evaluated, and asks the prover for the value at z of the interpolating polynomial of a random element of U. Intuitively, the answer provided by the prover "forces" it to choose one codeword from a list of "pretenders" that are close to U. We call this technique Domain Extending for Eliminating Pretenders (DEEP).
The DEEP method improves the soundness of the worst-case-to-average-case reduction for RS codes up their list decoding radius. This radius is bounded from below by the Johnson bound, implying average distance is approximately δ for all δ < 1-(1-δ_V)^(1/2). Under a plausible conjecture about the list decoding radius of Reed-Solomon codes, average distance from V is approximately δ for all δ. The DEEP technique can be generalized to all linear codes, giving improved reductions for capacity-achieving list-decodable codes.
Finally, we use the DEEP technique to devise two new protocols:
- An Interactive Oracle Proof of Proximity (IOPP) for RS codes, called DEEP-FRI. The soundness of the protocol improves upon that of the FRI protocol of [Ben-Sasson et al., ICALP 2018] while retaining linear arithmetic proving complexity and logarithmic verifier arithmetic complexity.
- An Interactive Oracle Proof (IOP) for the Algebraic Linking IOP (ALI) protocol used to construct zero knowledge scalable transparent arguments of knowledge (ZK-STARKs) in [Ben-Sasson et al., eprint 2018]. The new protocol, called DEEP-ALI, improves soundness of this crucial step from a small constant < 1/8 to a constant arbitrarily close to 1.

BibTeX - Entry

@InProceedings{bensasson_et_al:LIPIcs:2020:11690,
  author =	{Eli Ben-Sasson and Lior Goldberg and Swastik Kopparty and Shubhangi Saraf},
  title =	{{DEEP-FRI: Sampling Outside the Box Improves Soundness}},
  booktitle =	{11th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2020)},
  pages =	{5:1--5:32},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-134-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2020},
  volume =	{151},
  editor =	{Thomas Vidick},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl--Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2020/11690},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-116901},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2020.5},
  annote =	{Keywords: Interactive Oracle Proofs of Proximity, STARK, Low Degree Testing}
}

Keywords: Interactive Oracle Proofs of Proximity, STARK, Low Degree Testing
Collection: 11th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2020)
Issue Date: 2020
Date of publication: 06.01.2020


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