mimblewimble team mailing list archive

[Tim Ruffing <crypto@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jimmy,

ê is a bilinear map (a "pairing"), defined in line 87. (And I guess e
is just a typo, it should be ê.)

Pairings are often helpful in constructing crypto scheme, because they
add algebraic structure. The drawback is that you need special elliptic
curves; "normal" curves don't offer pairing. 
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pairing-based_cryptography for an
introduction.

Best,
Tim

On Thu, 2017-06-15 at 13:38 -0500, Jimmy Song wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Please excuse my ignorance. I've been going through the MimbleWimble
> paper (https://scalingbitcoin.org/papers/mimblewimble.pdf) and line
> 151 has a function e(G,S)=e(pk,H).
> 
> I don't see the function e defined anywhere and a similar ê is used
> around line 165. Can someone tell me what that function is?
> 
> Jimmy