We study the following question: what cryptographic assumptions are needed for obtaining constant-round computationally-sound argument systems? We focus on argument systems with almost-linear verification time for subclasses of $\mathbf{P}$, such as depth-bounded computations.
Kilian's celebrated work [STOC 1992] provides such 4-message arguments for $\mathbf{P}$ (actually, for $\mathbf{NP}$) using collision-resistant hash ... more >>>

Carmosino, Impagliazzo, Kabanets, and Kolokolova (CCC, 2016) showed that the existence of natural properties in the sense of Razborov and Rudich (JCSS, 1997) implies PAC learning algorithms in the sense of Valiant (Comm. ACM, 1984), for boolean functions in $\P/\poly$, under the uniform distribution and with membership queries. It is ... more >>>

We study close connections between Indistinguishability Obfuscation ($IO$) and the Minimum Circuit Size Problem ($MCSP$), and argue that algorithms for one of $MCSP$ or $IO$ would empower the other one. Some of our main results are:

\begin{itemize}
\item If there exists a perfect (imperfect) $IO$ that is computationally secure ... more >>>