English

An Overview of Cryptographic Accumulators

Cryptography and Security 2021-03-09 v1

Abstract

This paper is a primer on cryptographic accumulators and how to apply them practically. A cryptographic accumulator is a space- and time-efficient data structure used for set-membership tests. Since it is possible to represent any computational problem where the answer is yes or no as a set-membership problem, cryptographic accumulators are invaluable data structures in computer science and engineering. But, to the best of our knowledge, there is neither a concise survey comparing and contrasting various types of accumulators nor a guide for how to apply the most appropriate one for a given application. Therefore, we address that gap by describing cryptographic accumulators while presenting their fundamental and so-called optional properties. We discuss the effects of each property on the given accumulator's performance in terms of space and time complexity, as well as communication overhead.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2103.04330,
  title  = {An Overview of Cryptographic Accumulators},
  author = {Ilker Ozcelik and Sai Medury and Justin Broaddus and Anthony Skjellum},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.04330},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Note: This is an extended version of a paper published In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy (ICISSP 2021), pages 661-669

R2 v1 2026-06-23T23:50:58.378Z