According to Cointelegraph, technology firm Herodotus has released an on-chain accumulator that uses storage proof cryptography to improve access and verification of historical data on the Ethereum blockchain. The solution utilizes StarkWareâs STARK proving, a zero-knowledge proof (ZK-proof) technology co-invented by mathematician Eli Ben-Sasson. This allows users to verify data from any point of Ethereumâs blockchain without the need for a third-party.
StarkWare provided Herodotus with a custom-built instance of its shared prover service SHARP, which enables advanced scaling efficiency using recursive proofs. These proofs allow a virtual machine to generate proofs of transactions or blocks in parallel and real-time, batching them into a subsequent proof.
The accumulator acts as a cache that stores block headers, which can be used for validation if they are in the cache. If the header is not cached, the prover must generate a proof to cover the requested block range, add the block header to the accumulator, and then complete the requested storage proof computation.
The on-chain accumulator accumulates proofs that roll-up prior proofs, significantly reducing the time it takes to verify the Ethereum blockchain and associated data at any point in the networkâs history. Herodotus CTO Marcello Bardus notes that the technology eliminates the need to traverse the entire blockchain on the blockchain itself, allowing off-chain traversal and cherrypicking of specific blocks.
Starkware suggests that Storage Proofs could be a groundbreaking alternative to cross-chain bridges that rely on third-party oracles to track and verify data. Herodotus co-founder Kacper Koziol believes the accumulator is an innovation that Ethereum has long needed to align with blockchain principles of transparency and accessibility, allowing any user to access any point in Ethereumâs history.
The potential for storage proofs to build 'Web2 equivalent applications' is highlighted by both teams, tapping into the pioneering ability to access and verify Ethereum blockchain data autonomously. Account recovery is one potential use case, where the ability to verify on-chain data could be used to trigger a dead manâs switch or automate insurance protocols that use historical on-chain events to trigger smart contract payouts.
