Buterin Delves into Local Mixing Obfuscation, a High-Risk High-Reward Approach

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has published the third installment of his cryptographic obfuscation series, exploring 'local mixing' as a method to create secure and private computations. In contrast to lattice-heavy constructions discussed in previous posts, local mixing relies on ideas from hash function design.

In this approach, a circuit made of logic gates goes through a pipeline that scrubs away internal logic while maintaining the output identity. The process involves adding reversibility, hardening, gadgetization, mixing, and obfuscation, with mixing being just one part of the whole.

Buterin described local mixing as a 'wild and risky bet,' noting it sits on a 'graveyard of failed attempts at white-box cryptography.' However, he also mentioned that the authors of this method believe more efforts, along with an increased willingness to accept higher overhead, could make it successful.