Cryptographic Accumulators: Definitions, Constructions and Applications

After their first appearance in the cryptographic community ten years ago, cryptographic accumulators have received a discontinuous attention from the researchers of the field. Although occasionally studied, there has been no systematic effort to organize the knowledge of the subject, abstracting away from the unnecessary details of specific proposals, so as to provide a reliable starting point for further investigation. The goal of this paper is to present a complete picture of the topic, starting from the issue of defining an adequate formalization for cryptographic accumulators, and then moving on to a description of known constructions. A quick tour of interesting applications is then presented; finally, some possible lines for future development are suggested.