Universal Accumulators

Definition ∞ Universal accumulators are cryptographic primitives that can efficiently commit to a dynamic set of elements and later provide concise proofs of both membership and non-membership for any element. They offer a compact representation of a set while supporting updates and verifications. These accumulators are highly versatile.
Context ∞ Universal accumulators hold considerable promise for enhancing the scalability and privacy of blockchain systems. They can be used to efficiently verify the existence or absence of transactions or accounts within a large dataset without revealing the entire set. Research in this area seeks to develop accumulators that are highly efficient in terms of proof size and computation time, supporting more capable decentralized applications.