The Perpetual Powers of Tau Ceremony
Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2025 3:47 pm
The following ceremonial computational ritual is required for a particular purpose:
In the example above, the participants carry out a perpetual ceremonial ritual in order to seek protection from the abstract Platonic world for the integrity of a particular proof system. They will keep repeating this ritual forever. You can use the following computational tool to participate in the ritual:
Why do I mention this?
God is defined as an abstract Platonic being. This notion is related to, but is not exactly the same as, the notion of abstract Platonic object. As I have mentioned above, we can prove the existence of an abstract Platonic object by performing a computational ceremonial ritual. The question is now: Can we also prove the existence of an abstract Platonic being in that way? So, if you perform the appropriate ceremonial ritual, will this ritual leave behind the computational shadows that prove the existence of God?
Note, however, that not all abstract Platonic objects are computable. Most are actually even ineffable. Therefore, it is simply not possible produce the computational shadows that prove the existence of these objects. We only know that non-empty collections of them exist. We also know, however, that we cannot individually prove that they exist. Hence, there is actually no firm guarantee that you can conjure up the presence of the shadows of God through a ceremonial ritual.
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By the way, Tornado Cash is quite a notorious user of the Perpetual Powers of Tau:
Say that you want to prove the existence of the number 3. How do you do that? Well, you perform the ceremonial computational ritual of counting till 3. The ephemeral shadows of this computational ritual prove the existence of the abstract, Platonic object 3. So, you can prove the existence of an abstract Platonic object by carrying out a ceremonial ritual.https://medium.com/coinmonks/announcing ... da86af8377
This post is an update about our next major step: the launch of a multi-party trusted setup we dub the Perpetual Powers of Tau Ceremony.
Why is this necessary?
Anyone who deploys a zk-SNARK circuit to production must perform a computation called a trusted setup in order to generate a proving key and verifying key. Unfortunately, this process also produces a piece of data called toxic waste which must be discarded, as it can be used to produce fake proofs and thereby violate the security of the system. To solve this, the trusted setup can be performed using a special cryptographic ceremony in which multiple participants each take turns to perform a computation.
The final result of all the computations can be trusted as long as just one participant ensures that they securely discard their toxic waste.
The solution
The solution is to run a new phase-one ceremony for the entire community and thereby reduce the burden on all teams, including zk-SNARK scaling solutions (such as iden3 rollup, Matter Network, and Loopring) and mixers like Tornado Cash. Moreover, this ceremony will be perpetual — that is, there is no limit to the number of participants required, and any zk-SNARK project can pick any point of the ceremony to begin their circuit-specific second phase.
In the example above, the participants carry out a perpetual ceremonial ritual in order to seek protection from the abstract Platonic world for the integrity of a particular proof system. They will keep repeating this ritual forever. You can use the following computational tool to participate in the ritual:
As you can imagine, imploring protection from the Perpetual Powers of Tau is an extremely powerful ceremonial ritual.https://github.com/iden3/snarkjs
This library includes all the tools required to perform trusted setup multi-party ceremonies: including the universal powers of tau ceremony, and the second phase circuit-specific ceremonies.
Why do I mention this?
God is defined as an abstract Platonic being. This notion is related to, but is not exactly the same as, the notion of abstract Platonic object. As I have mentioned above, we can prove the existence of an abstract Platonic object by performing a computational ceremonial ritual. The question is now: Can we also prove the existence of an abstract Platonic being in that way? So, if you perform the appropriate ceremonial ritual, will this ritual leave behind the computational shadows that prove the existence of God?
Note, however, that not all abstract Platonic objects are computable. Most are actually even ineffable. Therefore, it is simply not possible produce the computational shadows that prove the existence of these objects. We only know that non-empty collections of them exist. We also know, however, that we cannot individually prove that they exist. Hence, there is actually no firm guarantee that you can conjure up the presence of the shadows of God through a ceremonial ritual.
---
By the way, Tornado Cash is quite a notorious user of the Perpetual Powers of Tau:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_Cash
On 8 August 2022, the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Department of the Treasury blacklisted Tornado Cash, making it illegal for United States citizens, residents, and companies to receive or send money through the service.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation on April 11, 2023, announced that it was opposed to the legal actions stating: "governmental actions targeting the publication of code based upon its topic necessarily target speech" as well as raising concerns about financial privacy.
On March 21, 2025, sanctions were dropped by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.