Cardano’s Scaling Solution Mithril Sees Exciting Progress with New Paper

• Charles Hoskinson expressed enthusiasm about a new research paper for Mithril.
• Mithril is a scaling solution on Cardano, launched on the mainnet in July.
• It uses an ALBA technique for large dataset validation without revealing the entire dataset.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson recently took to social media to express enthusiasm about the release of a new research paper for Mithril, a scaling solution for the Cardano network.

Mithril, which launched on Cardano’s mainnet in July, is a protocol that utilizes a stake-based threshold signature scheme to improve syncing times for nodes on the network. The new paper introduces techniques called approximate lower bound arguments (ALBAs) that allow users to prove they have a large dataset without revealing the entire dataset.

Mithril 2 is out. I'm very proud of this paper. It's damn fine work https://t.co/wEVB0XspkB pic.twitter.com/AHULGuCMWI

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) October 31, 2023

Cardano’s Mithril is useful for applications needing multiple digital signatures

This is particularly useful for applications that need to validate many digital signatures from various sources without displaying each individual signature. The research shows how ALBAs can be used for straight-line witness extraction in succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (SNARKs), minimizing prover effort and allowing shorter proof sizes.

Since launching on mainnet, over 80 stake pool operators have deployed Mithril signers, representing over 1.5 billion ADA in staked value. Recent improvements to the download and extraction processes have also lowered bootstrap times for the network nodes to under 20 minutes on consumer laptops.

As adoption of the Mithril protocol continues to expand, the newly published research provides promising indications that Cardano will be able to scale efficiently to meet increasing demand on the network. The steady progress demonstrates the network’s commitment to rigorous research and development as it evolves into a mature blockchain ecosystem.