bbs-signatures

This repository is the home to a performant multi-message digital signature algorithm implementation which supports deriving zero knowledge proofs that enable selective disclosure from the originally signed message set.

BBS+ Signatures are a digital signature algorithm originally born from the work on Short group signatures by Boneh, Boyen, and Shachum which was later improved on in Constant-Size Dynamic k-TAA as BBS+ and touched on again in section 4.3 in Anonymous Attestation Using the Strong Diffie Hellman Assumption Revisited .

BBS+ signatures require a pairing-friendly curve, this library includes support for BLS12-381.

BBS+ Signatures allow for multi-message signing whilst producing a single output signature. With a BBS signature, a proof of knowledge based proof can be produced where only some of the originally signed messages are revealed at the discretion of the prover.

For more details on the signature algorithm please refer to here.

Getting started

To use this package within your project simply run

npm install @mattrglobal/bbs-signatures

Or with Yarn

yarn add @mattrglobal/bbs-signatures

Environment Support

This library includes a couple of features to ensure the most performant implementation of BBS is running in a execution environment. The order of selection is the following.

If in a node js based environment and the optional dependency of @mattrglobal/node-bbs-signatures is installed use this.
If in an environment that supports Web Assembly use this.

Note Please refer to running the benchmarks below where you can compare these different implementations, the differences are very notable.

Note To force the usage of a particular environment set the BBS_SIGNATURES_MODE environment variable to one of the following values

NODE_JS_MODULE - Use native node module, ensure @mattrglobal/node-bbs-signatures is installed
WASM - Use the wasm module

Note Previous releases of this library supported an asm.js compilation for usage in react native environments, however this has been deprecated due to performance issues.

Usage

See the sample directory for a runnable demo's.

The following is a short sample on how to use the API

import {
  generateBls12381G2KeyPair,
  blsSign,
  blsVerify,
  blsCreateProof,
  blsVerifyProof,
} from "@mattrglobal/bbs-signatures";

//Generate a new key pair
const keyPair = await generateBls12381G2KeyPair();

//Set of messages we wish to sign
const messages = [
  Uint8Array.from(Buffer.from("message1", "utf-8")),
  Uint8Array.from(Buffer.from("message2", "utf-8")),
];

//Create the signature
const signature = await blsSign({
  keyPair,
  messages: messages,
});

//Verify the signature
const isVerified = await blsVerify({
  publicKey: keyPair.publicKey,
  messages: messages,
  signature,
});

//Derive a proof from the signature revealing the first message
const proof = await blsCreateProof({
  signature,
  publicKey: keyPair.publicKey,
  messages,
  nonce: Uint8Array.from(Buffer.from("nonce", "utf8")),
  revealed: [0],
});

//Verify the created proof
const isProofVerified = await blsVerifyProof({
  proof,
  publicKey: keyPair.publicKey,
  messages: messages.slice(0, 1),
  nonce: Uint8Array.from(Buffer.from("nonce", "utf8")),
});

Element Size

Within a digital signature there are several elements for which it is useful to know the size, the following table outlines the general equation for calculating element sizes in relation to BBS+ signatures as it is dependent on the pairing friendly curve used.

Element	Size Equation
Private Key	F
Public Key	G2
Signature	G1 + 2*F
Proof	5G1 + (4 + no_of_hidden_messages)F

F A field element
G1 A point in the field of G1
G2 A point in the field of G2
no_of_hidden_messages The number of the hidden messages

This library includes specific support for BLS12-381 keys with BBS+ signatures and hence gives rise to the following concrete sizes

Element	Size with BLS12-381
Private Key	32 Bytes
Public Key	96 Bytes
Signature	112 Bytes
Proof	368 + (no_of_hidden_messages)*32 Bytes

Getting started as a contributor

The following describes how to get started as a contributor to this project

Prerequisites

The following is a list of dependencies you must install to build and contribute to this project

Yarn
Rust

For more details see our contribution guidelines

Install

To install the package dependencies run:

yarn install --frozen-lockfile

Build

To build the project for debug run:

yarn build

Test

To run the all test in the project run:

yarn test

To run just the tests for a node environment using the native node module of @mattrglobal-node-bbs-signatures run:

yarn test:node

To run just the tests for a node environment using the wasm module run:

yarn test:wasm

To run just the tests for a browser environment run:

yarn test:browser

Benchmark

To benchmark the implementation locally in a node environment using the native node module of @mattrglobal-node-bbs-signatures run:

yarn benchmark:node

To benchmark the implementation locally in a node environment using the wasm module run:

yarn benchmark:wasm

Dependencies

This library uses the bbs rust crate for the implementation of BBS+ signatures and BLS12-381 which is then wrapped and exposed in javascript/typescript using Web Assembly.

Security Policy

Please see our security policy for additional details about responsible disclosure of security related issues.

Relevant References

For those interested in more details, you might find the following resources helpful