I had this wild idea…
Is it possible to side-step the generation of ‘toxic waste’ and go directly to the desired data?
If private keys are just about any random number, is it true that there are just as many unique public keys within a set number space?
Even if there are clumps of private keys that happen to generate the same public key, is it possible to generate bits and simply treat them as a public key? Without a coresponding private key, are there any methods to test whether or not a given bit string has the qualities of a public key?
To what end/purpose would you do that?
As I understand it, trusted setup involves generating private key data from which public data is derived but the existence of this private key data is a liability as it would enable transaction forging. The fact that users are supposed to trust that it is safely disposed is a contentious issue.
If you’re talking about the trusted setup, as I understand it, the required parameters are actually just going to be random as you said. The question is, how to generate these random numbers, as there is no randomness in deterministic systems such as our modern day computers. So whoever knows the probabilistic algorithm and its parameters to compute these random numbers, will apparently potentially be able to forge false proofs for the system in the future, which is why this sort of multi-party trusted setup exists, in which just one participant needs to be trusted.
Correct me if I’m wrong
Hehe interesting, but I guess a truly paranoid person would argue that there’s no way of making sure that nobody tampered with the device
To repeat part of my original post: Is it possible to side-step the generation of ‘toxic waste’ and go directly to the desired data?