### Luca Nizzardo Research Scientist/ [Cryptonet](https://research.protocol.ai/groups/cryptonet/) ## Education PhD in Software, Systems, and Computing, 2018 Universidad Politécnica de Madrid MS in Mathematics, 2013 Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca BS in Mathematics, 2011 Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca Luca is a Cryptography Researcher at Protocol Labs, where he works on crypto-related problems involving Filecoin. Before joining Protocol Labs, Luca did his PhD in Cryptography at Madrid Institute for Advanced Studies in Software under the outstanding supervision of Dario Fiore. He is broadly interested in Blockchain related problems involving cryptography, like Zero Knowledge Proof Systems, Contingent Payments, Consensus Algorithms, and Vector Commitment Schemes. He has been working on cryptographic techniques for the security of the Cloud since 2014, with a particular focus on homomorphic primitives. Before starting his PhD, he was a business intern at IBM Italy in the Global Business Services division (Fall 2013) and a visiting master student at City College of New York under the supervision of Rosario Gennaro (Spring 2013). During the Spring 2017, he was a visiting PhD student under the supervision of Rosario Gennaro at City College of New York. ## Areas of Expertise Cryptography ## Talks 2020-07-01 [Vector commitment techniques and applications to verifiable decentralized storage](https://research.protocol.ai/talks/vector-commitment-techniques-and-applications-to-verifiable-decentralized-storage/) Theory and Practice of Blockchains 2020 / 2020.07.01 Matteo Campanelli, Dario Fiore, [Nicola Greco](https://research.protocol.ai/authors/nicola-greco/), [Luca Nizzardo](https://research.protocol.ai/authors/luca-nizzardo/), Dimitris Kolonelos [Cryptonet](https://research.protocol.ai/groups/cryptonet/) [Cryptography](https://research.protocol.ai/areas/cryptography/) ## Publications 2023-08-30/Report [Filecoin Proof of Useful Space](https://research.protocol.ai/publications/filecoin-proof-of-useful-space/) This document provides a simple formal definition of Proof of Space (taken from the academic literature) and an informal definition of persistent and useful space (needed for Filecoin). It describes construction details and a security proof for the Stacked-DRGs proof of space (SDR), and goes into how SDR is used in Filecoin. [Irene Giacomelli](https://research.protocol.ai/authors/irene-giacomelli/), [Luca Nizzardo](https://research.protocol.ai/authors/luca-nizzardo/) [Cryptonet](https://research.protocol.ai/groups/cryptonet/) [Cryptography](https://research.protocol.ai/areas/cryptography/) 2022-04-08/Report [Witness-authenticated key exchange revisited: Improved models, simpler constructions, extensions to groups](https://research.protocol.ai/publications/witness-authenticated-key-exchange-revisited-improved-models-simpler-constructions-extensions-to-groups/) We revisit the notion of Witness Authenticated Key Exchange (WAKE) where a party can be authenticated through a generic witness to an NP statement. We point out shortcomings of previous definitions, protocols and security proofs in Ngo et al. [Matteo Campanelli](https://research.protocol.ai/authors/matteo-campanelli/), [Rosario Gennaro](https://research.protocol.ai/authors/rosario-gennaro/), Kelsey Melissaris, [Luca Nizzardo](https://research.protocol.ai/authors/luca-nizzardo/) [Cryptonet](https://research.protocol.ai/groups/cryptonet/) [Cryptography](https://research.protocol.ai/areas/cryptography/), [Distributed systems](https://research.protocol.ai/areas/distributed-systems/) 2020-12-05/Report [Incrementally aggregatable vector commitment techniques and applications to verifiable decentralized storage](https://research.protocol.ai/publications/incrementally-aggregatable-vector-commitment-techniques-and-applications-to-verifiable-decentralized-storage/) Vector commitments with subvector openings (SVC) [Lai-Malavolta, Boneh-Bunz-Fisch; CRYPTO’19] allow one to open a committed vector at a set of positions with an opening of size independent of both the vector’s length and the number of opened positions. Advances in Cryptology – ASIACRYPT 2020 / 2020.12.05 [Matteo Campanelli](https://research.protocol.ai/authors/matteo-campanelli/), Dario Fiore, [Nicola Greco](https://research.protocol.ai/authors/nicola-greco/), Dimitris Kolonelos, [Luca Nizzardo](https://research.protocol.ai/authors/luca-nizzardo/) [Cryptonet](https://research.protocol.ai/groups/cryptonet/) [Cryptography](https://research.protocol.ai/areas/cryptography/), [Distributed systems](https://research.protocol.ai/areas/distributed-systems/) 2020-11-17/Conference paper [Subversion-resilient enhanced privacy ID](https://research.protocol.ai/publications/subversion-resilient-enhanced-privacy-id/) Anonymous attestation for secure hardware platforms leverages tailored group signature schemes and assumes the hardware to be trusted. Yet, there is an increasing concern on the trustworthiness of hardware components and embedded systems. Cryptographers’ Track at the RSA Conference / 2022.02.07 / San Francisco, CA, USA Antonio Faonio, Dario Fiore, [Luca Nizzardo](https://research.protocol.ai/authors/luca-nizzardo/), Claudio Soriente [Cryptonet](https://research.protocol.ai/groups/cryptonet/) [Cryptography](https://research.protocol.ai/areas/cryptography/)