@article {15165, title = {Bounds on the efficiency of black-box commitment schemes}, journal = {Theoretical Computer Science}, volume = {411}, year = {2010}, month = {2010/03/04/}, pages = {1251 - 1260}, abstract = {Constructions of cryptographic primitives based on general assumptions (e.g., one-way functions) tend to be less efficient than constructions based on specific (e.g., number-theoretic) assumptions. This has prompted a recent line of research aimed at investigating the best possible efficiency of (black-box) cryptographic constructions based on general assumptions. Here, we present bounds on the efficiency of statistically-binding commitment schemes constructed using black-box access to one-way permutations; our bounds are tight for the case of perfectly-binding schemes. Our bounds hold in an extension of the Impagliazzo{\textendash}Rudich model: we show that any construction beating our bounds would imply the unconditional existence of a one-way function (from which a statistically-binding commitment scheme could be constructed {\textquotedblleft}from scratch{\textquotedblright}).}, keywords = {Commitment schemes, cryptography}, isbn = {0304-3975}, doi = {10.1016/j.tcs.2009.10.021}, url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304397509007737}, author = {Horvitz,Omer and Katz, Jonathan} }