A Complexity-Theoretic Approach to Proofs of Space
TL;DR
It is shown that non-trivial PoS follow from (a) $\mathsf{E}=\mathsf{DTIME[2^{O(n)}]}$ is hard for exponential-size nondeterministic circuits, and (b) collision-resistant hash functions, and (c) SNARGs for $\mathsf{P}$.
Abstract
A Proof of Space, PoS, as introduced by Dziembowski et al. [CRYPTO'15], is a two-phase protocol that enables a Prover to convince an efficient Verifier that it has allocated a large amount of persistent memory to storing some information. To our knowledge, all existing PoS protocols are only known to be secure in the random oracle model (or under ad hoc assumptions about cryptographic assumptions). We provide an elementary framework for constructing PoS from a combination of derandomization assumptions and cryptographic assumptions. We provide a few simple instantiations of the framework. We show that non-trivial PoS follow from (a) $\mathsf{E}=\mathsf{DTIME[2^{O(n)}]}$ is hard for exponential-size nondeterministic circuits (an assumption introduced to show $\mathsf{AM}=\mathsf{NP}$), and (b) collision-resistant hash functions. We also show that PoS with nearly optimal parameters and interaction pattern follows from assumption (a) above and (c) SNARGs for $\mathsf{P}$.