Meet Kryptology: Coinbase’s Open Source Cryptography Library

We’re excited to announce the open sourcing of Kryptology. Kryptology is a cryptographic library for the Crypto community that will enable and empower developers to create novel crypto innovations with state-of-the-art cryptography.

At Coinbase, cryptography is a first-class citizen. We’re passionate about cryptography as a driver for innovation in crypto. It is the most important mechanism for delivering delightful user experiences, and it enables privacy solutions that will change the security paradigm.

Why do we believe this?

Crypto is founded on cryptographic innovation. As described in Bitcoin’s academic pedigree, Bitcoin used existing, but not-yet-production, academic cryptography (hashcash, Chaum’s E-cash, Merkle trees) with economic game-theory to solve the Byzantine Generals problem.

Crypto changes cryptography. The feedback loop is running at warp speed. Cryptographers created private transactions with zero-knowledge techniques in ZCash, The Internet Computer is built on new cryptographic breakthroughs, Monero uses ring signatures to gain confidentiality, skale is using BLS to create roll-ups to improve scale and reduce storage on-chain, and Mina and ZCash use Halo 2 and Pasta.

Coinbase also strives to bring near-future cryptography into production. zkSNARKS and Cryptographic Accumulators, FROST, and Threshold Signing.

While enabling further innovation is our primary goal, we also aim for Kryptology to elevate the standard for what is considered to be a robust, usable cryptographic library. The library provides developers with a toolbox of secure, audited, and easy-to-use APIs. Kryptology is designed to be misuse-resistant (i.e., “hard to screw up”), so developers can focus on what they do best. We hope this translates to more projects that build and grow the crypto ecosystem.

A guide to Kryptology, including full documentation, can be found in the repository. This includes common development issues and lessons learned from our years of experience with cryptographic implementations. We hope these learnings will be uniquely valuable for others that want to support developers and build great user experiences. Over time, our goal is to support a thriving ecosystem of new and working cryptography for many more applications. Check out our open source guidelines or get started here.

If you are interested in cutting-edge cryptography, Coinbase is hiring!

Meet Kryptology: Coinbase’s Open Source Cryptography Library was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.