Bab, a BLAKE3-Inspired Hash Function Family With Streaming Verification, Goes Open Source
carsonfarmer · x · 2026-10-04
Aljoscha Meyer released Bab, a family of secure hash functions inspired by BLAKE3, designed for peer-to-peer content-addressable storage. Key features:
- Streaming verification: readers can periodically verify that each prefix hashes to the target digest (similar to Bao), solving the problem of malicious servers feeding garbage on interrupted transfers.
- Optimizations beyond Bao: omitting left labels, lower layers, and chunk indices for efficient slice streaming.
- Constant-sized length proofs: unlike BLAKE3 and Bao, Bab digests support fixed-size proofs of string length.
The spec covers a Merkle tree structure, parameterized chunk sizes, and an instantiation (WILLIAM3) built on conventional hashes. klaehnr aptly called it a BLAKE3 "remix" with slightly different goals. Code is on GitHub.
More from Infra
- Dev: astra compactions still take 3-8 minutes, code untouched since Sept 24 — banteg · 2026-10-04
- A 5KB pure x86-64 assembly engine runs Gemma-2B at 4.6 tok/s on CPU — tom_tsai28 · 2026-10-04
- Compute Is the New Currency: OpenAI Gave YC Startups $2M in Credits for Equity — AccBalanced · 2026-10-04
- Postgres vs VectorDB explained in 2 minutes — aronchick · 2026-10-04
- Redditor seeks RX6700XT results for Strata Qwen 3.8 Flash Next — Loose_Doubt367 · 2026-10-04
- Cerebras CEO: architecture choices sidestep HBM, CoWoS and TSMC 3nm bottlenecks — rohanpaul_ai · 2026-10-04