Soon, anyone will be able to verify anything on Ethereum.
A storage-proof startup Herodotus introduced an on-chain accumulator that’s based on a custom-built instance of Starkware’s shared prover.
The innovation would allow users to verify data at any point in its history on the Ethereum blockchain. It circumvents the limit of users being able to validate only the 256 most recent block hashes.
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It can potentially be used for account recovery or insurance protocols that rely on historical data.
Kacper Koziol, co-founder of Herodotus, stated the users will have the freedom to look up whatever they want from whichever point in blockchain’s history, claiming that for the first time, users will “be able to prove the correctness of any aspect of anyone’s on-chain information.”
He added:
It’s an innovation that is sorely needed to bring Ethereum in line with the principles of transparency and accessibility that are so central in blockchain communities.
The Herodotus accumulator utilized storage-proof cryptography that enables the validation of assets, data, or transactions without the interjection of third parties. It reportedly uses STARK proving, a zero-knowledge technology from StarkWare.
Speculations on how to use the innovation range from Ethereum scaling to Web3 applications like verifiable AI.
According to Marcello Bardus, chief technology officer at Herodotus, such innovative accumulators help verify storage proofs. He explained:
Finally, we don’t have to traverse the entire blockchain on the blockchain itself, but we can do it off chain, generate an accumulator and just cherrypick one specific block without iterating from the entire chain on the chain itself.
The Herodotus accumulator is set to be available on both Ethereum and Starknet, but there are plans to extend its availability to other Ethereum Layer-2 solutions.
The innovation marks a milestone for Ethereum and comes at a fortuitous time as the network just celebrated its 8th birthday.
