Whitepaper Alert: A Comprehensive Review of TLSNotary Protocol

We are pleased to announce the publication of the first comprehensive review of the TLSNotary – the MPC-TLS protocol. This whitepaper is now available on arxiv.org.

The Significance of TLSNotary

TLSNotary is a pivotal project in the cryptographic ecosystem for several reasons:

1. It's a public good: An open-source, open-license project sponsored by the Ethereum Foundation's Privacy and Scalability Explorations group.
2. Expert-led development: The project has an outstanding team of cryptography engineers, including Dan, who originally proposed the concept on the Bitcoin forum in 2014.
3. Nearing production: After multiple alpha releases, TLSNotary is approaching its first audit and production release, scheduled for next year.

Our Contribution

At vlayer, we're committed to transparency and contributing to the public goods we build upon. While TLSNotary is an excellent project, it lacked a comprehensive description of its inner workings. Our whitepaper aims to fill this gap, serving as a valuable resource for auditors, engineers and researchers, aiming to understand the foundations of the protocol. 

We strongly believe that spreading knowledge makes our community stronger and safer. The paper starts with thorough explanations of Multiparty Computation (MPC) techniques, designed to be digestible without prior MPC knowledge. The accessible introduction to underlying cryptographic primitives, including Oblivious Transfer (OT), Oblivious Linear Evaluation (OLE), and Garbled Circuits (GCs) aims to make MPC moon-math as comprehensible as possible. And only after that do we go into the details around the core of the TLSNotary, exploring the three protocol phases: Notarization (MPC-TLS), Selective Disclosure, and Verification.

Acknowledgments

We've created this paper with significant input from the TLSNotary team, ensuring accuracy and depth in our explanations. We extend our gratitude especially to Thomas, sinu and Hendrik Eeckhaut for their expertise and patience in explaining the protocol's inner workings and reviewing the article. 

Access the Whitepaper

Click on the button below to download the full whitepaper: 

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Get in Touch

We welcome feedback and discussion - feel free to reach out to Maciej and Marek with your thoughts or questions about the paper. 

At vlayer, we use TLSNotary to build Web Proofs, bridging web2 private data to on-chain applications. For those interested in exploring this technology further, we recommend checking out our additional resources:

1. An intuitive blogpost comparing Web Proofs and Oracles‍
2. Verifiable Data Report: Web Proofs - a detailed exploration of the Web Proofs landscape