rich1.0npub1f2nvlx49er5c7sqa43src6ssyp6snd4qwvtkwm5avc2l84cs84esecrwethttps://nostr.ae/npub1f2nvlx49er5c7sqa43src6ssyp6snd4qwvtkwm5avc2l84cs84esecrwetnjumphttps://nostr.ae📅 Original date posted:2014-04-04 📝 Original message:On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 9:36 AM, Matt Whitlock <bip at mattwhitlock.name> wrote: > Are you proposing to switch from prime fields to a binary field? Because if you're going to "break up" a secret into little pieces, you can't assume that every piece of the secret will be strictly less than some 8-bit prime modulus. And if you're going to do a base conversion, then you have to do arbitrary-precision integer math anyway, so I don't see that the small field really saves you any code. Yes, I'm proposing using the binary extension field of GF(2^8). There are many secret sharing and data integrity applications available already operating over GF(2^8) so you can go compare implementation approaches without having to try them our yourself. Obviously anything efficiently encoded as bytes will efficiently encode over GF(2^8). > Weren't you just clamoring for implementation *simplicity* in your previous paragraph? :) I do think there is a material difference in complexity that comes in layers rather than at a single point. It's much easier to implement a complex thing that has many individually testable parts then a single complex part. (Implementing arithmetic mod some huge P is quite a bit of work unless you're using some very high level language with integrated bignums— and are comfortable hoping that their bignums are sufficiently consistent with the spec).