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Verifier Non-Locality in Interactive Proofs

Abstract

In multi-prover interactive proofs, the verifier interrogates the provers and attempts to steal their knowledge. Other than that, the verifier's role has not been studied. Augmentation of the provers with non-local resources results in classes of languages that may not be NEXP. We have discovered that the verifier plays a much more important role than previously thought. Simply put, the verifier has the capability of providing non-local resources for the provers intrinsically. Therefore, standard MIPs may already contain protocols equivalent to one in which the prover is augmented non-locally. Existing MIPs' proofs of soundness implicitly depend on the fact that the verifier is not a non-local resource provider. The verifier's non-locality is a new unused tool and liability for protocol design and analysis. Great care should have been taken when claiming that ZKMIP=MIP. We show specific issues with existing protocols and revisit the proof of this statement. For this purpose, we also define a new model of multi-prover interactive proofs which we call "correlational confinement form".

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