mixnet

English

Etymology

Compound of mix +‎ net.

Noun

mixnet (plural mixnets)

1. (communication, technology) A server or group of servers facilitating private communication between individuals by randomly scrambling the order that messages are received, so that an adversary is unable to determine the source or destination of any message.
   • 2004, Philippe Golle, Markus Jakobsson, Ari Juels, Paul Syverson, “Universal Re-encryption for Mixnets”, in Topics in Cryptology – CT-RSA 2004 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; 2964), Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Science+Business Media, →DOI, →ISBN, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 163:

     One type of mix network accepts as input a collection of ciphertexts, and outputs the corresponding plaintexts in a randomly permuted order. The main privacy property desired of such a mixnet is that the permutation matching inputs to outputs should be known only to the mixnet, and no one else. In particular, an adversary should be unable to guess which input ciphertext corresponds to an output plaintext any more effectively than by guessing at random.

   • 2016 July 11, Larry Hardesty, Phys.org‎^[1], archived from the original on 2023-01-28:

     Each server in the mixnet removes only one layer of encryption, so that only the last server knows a message's ultimate destination.

   • 2023 May 26, Rand Hindi, “How Homomorphic Encryption Can Make Blockchain Private”, in Forbes‎^[2], New York, N.Y.: Forbes Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-06-12:

     This issue of privacy in blockchain isn't new, and many ideas have been proposed, such as keeping the data off-chain and using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to prove we did the right computation (e.g., Aleo and Aztec) or using mixnets to anonymize transactions (e.g., Tornado Cash).