Yesterday’s post mentioned Tweedledum and Tweedledee, a pair of elliptic curves named after characters in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass.
Zcash uses a very similar pair of elliptic curves for zero-knowledge proofs: Pallas and Vesta. One named after a Greek goddess associated with war, and one named after a Roman goddess associated with home and hearth. (Zcash used the Jubjub curve, also mentioned yesterday, though not in the most recent release.)
The curves Pallas and Vesta are collectively known as the “pasta” curves, pasta being a portmanteau of pallas and vesta.
pa(llas ve)sta
Tweedledum, Tweedledee, Pallas, and Vesta all have the equation
y² = x³ + 5
over different prime-order fields.
The number of elements in Tweedledum’s field equals the number of elements in Tweedledee’s elliptic curve, and vice versa. The same relationship holds between Pallas and Vesta. And all four curves have roughly 2254 points.
If p is the size of Tweedledum’s field (and Tweedledee’s curve), and q is the size of Tweedledee’s field (and Tweedledum’s curve),
p = 2254 + 4707489545178046908921067385359695873
q = 2254 + 4707489544292117082687961190295928833
If p is the size of Pallas’ field (and Vesta’s curve), and q is the size of Vesta’s field (and Pallas’ curve),
p = 2254 + 45560315531419706090280762371685220353
q = 2254 + 45560315531506369815346746415080538113
Pallas and Vesta are also the names of two of the four “original” (discovered before 1810) asteroids. I believe that the asteroid Pallas is named after Pallas Athena (a facet/epithet of Athena), and not after the version of the myth where Pallas was a giant or Titan. So the same is very possibly true of the curve.