SoquObscura Confidential Transactions¶
Status: in development (not yet active)
SoquObscura is Soqucoin's current post-quantum confidential-transaction system. It is under active development and is not yet active on any network. The performance figures below are research-prototype measurements, not production guarantees. Patent pending (SOQ-P010).
SoquObscura hides transaction amounts on a quantum-safe chain while still letting every validator confirm that no coins were created or destroyed. It is the successor to two earlier research directions, Lattice-BP++ and LatticeFold+, and consolidates their goals into a single construction with a completed soundness story and block-level aggregation.
What it proves¶
A confidential transaction replaces the visible amount with a lattice commitment and carries proofs that keep the ledger sound without revealing values:
- Range proof: the committed amount is within a valid, non-negative range.
- Balance proof: inputs equal outputs plus fees, so no value is created or destroyed.
- Verifiable encryption (VE): where required, the committed value is recoverable by an authorized party, proven correct without disclosing it.
Construction¶
SoquObscura is built on published lattice proof systems rather than a bespoke scheme:
| Layer | Basis |
|---|---|
| Commitments | ABDLOP lattice commitments |
| Proof system | LNP22 (Lyubashevsky, Nguyen, Plancon, CRYPTO 2022), generated via LaZer |
| Block aggregation | LaBRADOR (Beullens, Seiler, CRYPTO 2023) |
| Hardness | Module lattices (same family as ML-DSA-44) |
The reference proof toolkit is LaZer (IBM Research, CCS 2024, MIT license), which implements both LNP22 and LaBRADOR. Building on a published, independently studied construction is a deliberate choice: it gives the soundness argument an academic basis rather than resting on a one-off design.
Exactness architecture
Lattice proofs carry a small amount of approximate slack. SoquObscura confines that slack to non-consensus-critical margins and enforces the boundary with compile-time static assertions, so the consensus-critical checks remain exact and identical on every node.
Block-level aggregation¶
Per-transaction proofs are large. LaBRADOR aggregates a block's confidential-transaction proofs into a single succinct pack proof, so a validator's per-block cost stays roughly constant as confidential-transaction volume grows.
Consensus integration¶
Confidential transactions are opt-in and coexist with standard transparent transactions on the same chain.
Research-prototype measurements¶
Measured on a Xeon reference machine. These are prototype numbers for the operations that exist today, not activation-ready guarantees.
| Operation | Time | Proof size |
|---|---|---|
| Range prove | 61.8 ms | 17,991 B |
| Range verify | 26.8 ms | n/a |
| Balance verify | 34.9 ms | 20,233 B |
| Verifiable-encryption verify | 56.9 ms | 22,426 B |
Relationship to earlier work¶
SoquObscura supersedes Lattice-BP++ (SOQ-P002), which established the lattice-commitment and range-proof direction but had incomplete soundness enforcement, and LatticeFold+, an earlier batch-verification research track. Both are retained as reference and are not active on any network.