In this paper we show how to construct noninteractive zero knowledge proofs for any NP statement under general (rather than number theoretic) assumptions, and how to enable polynomially many provers to give polynomially many such proofs based on a single random string. Our constructions can be used in cryptographic applications in which the prover is restricted to polynomial time.

A major open problem in the theory of multiprover protocols is to characterize the languages which can be accepted by fully parallelized protocols which achieve an exponentially low probability of cheating in a single round. The problem was motivated by the observation that the probability of cheating the n parallel executions of a multiprover protocol can be exponentially higher than the probability of cheating in n sequential executions of the same protocol. The problem is solved by proving that any language in NEXP-time has a fully parallelized multiprover protocol. By combining this result with a fully parallelized version of the protocol of M. Ben-Or et al. (ACM Symp. on Theory of Computing, 1988), a one-round perfect zero-knowledge protocol (under no cryptographic assumptions) can be obtained for every NEXPTIME language.>

The authors solve the two major open problems associated with noninteractive zero-knowledge proofs: how to enable polynomially many provers to prove in writing polynomially many theorems based on the basis of a single random string, and how to construct such proofs under general (rather than number-theoretic) assumptions. The constructions can be used in cryptographic applications in which the prover is restricted to polynomial time, and they are much simpler than earlier (and less capable) proposals.>