International Association for Cryptologic Research
- Incrementally Verifiable Oracle Aided Computationon November 10, 2026 at 10:36 pm
ePrint Report: Incrementally Verifiable Oracle Aided Computation Shafi Goldwasser, Yael Tauman Kalai Incrementally verifiable computation ($\IVC$) allows a prover to maintain a short proof that can be efficiently updated after each computation step, without retaining or recomputing the preceding execution. In the context of AI safety, the need for incremental verification is particularly important, as AI systems interact with users over time and perform further computation after each interaction. However, standard $\IVC$ schemes do not directly address a crucial feature of AI tasks: their dependence on external information and expertise. Indeed, the UK AISI Alignment Team~\cite{IrvingM25} emphasizes that verification methods for AI safety should accommodate access to external information and human judgment. This is the topic of this paper. We construct $\IVC$ schemes for {\em oracle-aided} computations under the Learning with Errors ($\LWE$) assumption by first constructing succinct non-interactive arguments ($\SNARG$s), and then extending them to the incremental setting. We consider the following two settings, where below, $\lambda$ is the security parameter, $n$ is the input length, and $T$, $S$, and $Q$ are the time, space, and oracle-query bounds. \begin{itemize} \item \textbf{Robust computations.} For bounded-space computations, including non-deterministic computations, in which every accepting purported execution on a false input contains at least an $\varepsilon$-fraction of incorrect oracle answers, we construct {\em privately verifiable} $\SNARG$s and $\IVC$. For $\IVC$, the corresponding robustness condition is imposed on the claimed configuration. Public parameters, private verification keys, and proofs have length $\poly(\lambda,S,\log T,1/\varepsilon)$, and verification uses $O(\lambda/\varepsilon)$ oracle calls. We complement this result with a lower bound ruling out (deterministic) publicly verifiable $\SNARG$s and $\IVC$s with public parameters of length $o(n)$, and $o(Q)$ verifier oracle queries. \item \textbf{Signed oracles.} For oracles that digitally sign their query-answer pairs, we construct publicly verifiable $\SNARG$s and $\IVC$ without a robustness assumption, and with oracle-free setup and verification. Public parameters and proofs have length $\poly(\lambda,S,\log T)$. For deterministic computations with oracle query and answer lengths $\poly(\lambda,\log T)$, we remove the dependence on $S$, obtaining public parameter and proof lengths $\poly(\lambda,\log T)$. \end{itemize} All our constructions have adaptive completeness and soundness. Sub-exponential hardness of $\LWE$ suffices for all constructions; polynomial hardness suffices in the deterministic signed-oracle setting when $T$ is polynomially bounded in $\lambda$. All cryptographic assumptions are required to hold even given access to the underlying oracle.
- The Hermite Constants in Dimensions 10, 11 and 12on November 10, 2026 at 10:36 pm
ePrint Report: The Hermite Constants in Dimensions 10, 11 and 12 Rémi Géraud-Stewart, David Naccache This paper introduces a series of seven papers establishing $\gamma_{10}^{10}=4^{10}/768$, $\gamma_{11}^{11}=4^{11}/972$ and $\gamma_{12}=4/\sqrt{3}$, under the attributed classification of perfect forms of rank nine and the explicitly stated computational inputs. The argument treats the dimensions in order. In dimension ten, a section orthogonal to a shortest dual vector is compared with a perfect form. A completed exact census leaves three possible reference forms, and matrix inequalities exclude a determinant below 768 in each case. In dimension eleven, two successive sections give a chain of ranks eleven, ten and nine. The dimension-ten bound controls the determinant of the last section. The verified global census and preliminary certificates reduce the problem to ten local cases: nine are treated in five companion papers, and one in “A Focus on Hermite Constant 11”. The local arguments combine contact geometry, section bounds and finite rational covers. Mordell’s inequality then gives the dimension-twelve upper bound, matched by the Coxeter–Todd lattice. We prove the common reduction, explain the dependency between the papers, and state exactly which finite assertions must be checked. The accompanying Lean development verifies the complete analytic deduction from those inputs; external exact checkers verify the large certificate data.
- A Focus on Hermite Constant 11on November 10, 2026 at 10:36 pm
ePrint Report: A Focus on Hermite Constant 11 Rémi Géraud-Stewart, David Naccache This paper assembles the dimension-eleven argument in a series on the Hermite constants in dimensions ten, eleven and twelve. The root paper reduces a hypothetical lattice of minimum 4 and determinant below 972 to a chain of sections of ranks eleven, ten and nine. Its rank-nine section is marked by a perfect form below an explicit determinant cutoff. The global finite computation leaves 4 487 813 candidate forms and excludes all but ten by certificates. We state the mathematical content of these certificates, describe their data and checking rules, and prove why every valid certificate excludes the corresponding form. The four formats are trace, domain, glue and tree certificates; each tree must cover its entire stated domain. One of the ten remaining cases, 0052:005247066, is treated here by a complete gluing cover. Five companion papers settle the other nine. We also prove the common inequalities used by those local arguments. The resulting bound is $\gamma_{11}=4/\sqrt[11]{972}$, conditional on the attributed rank-nine classification, the rank-ten census and the stated global and local finite checks.
- Revisiting the Security of OleF, t-OleF, and OlÆFon November 10, 2026 at 10:24 pm
ePrint Report: Revisiting the Security of OleF, t-OleF, and OlÆF Tingting Guo, Peng Wang, Shuping Mao, Yan Jia, Jiadong Han We revisit the security of OleF, t-OleF, and \olaef\ and identify two independent security flaws. First, we establish a mask-compensation relation between continuation and termination processing in OleF and t-OleF. Exploiting this relation, we construct a two-encryption-query distinguisher against OleF with advantage $1-2^{-2n}$. We further give two concrete AXU hash families for which the same attack applies to t-OleF, revealing flaws in the original DOSPRP and SPRTOP security proofs. We extend these attacks to \olaef\ through valid encodings, breaking its privacy and integrity. In particular, the integrity forgery succeeds with probability $1$ under full-domain verification when the target expansion length is $1$ and extends to larger expansion lengths under suffix-only verification. Second, we refute the claimed ideal RUP integrity bound for variable-expansion online authenticated encryption. Even with an ideal tweakable online permutation, prior unverified decryption queries at smaller expansion lengths can reveal part of the target authentication suffix. We construct counterexamples showing that two such decryption queries and one forgery attempt achieve a success probability of $3/8$, exceeding the claimed bound of $1/4$. We also derive a general expression for the forgery success probability. Finally, we discuss the corresponding repairing
- How to Revoke Users in Encryption Schemes?on November 10, 2026 at 10:24 pm
ePrint Report: How to Revoke Users in Encryption Schemes? Sanjam Garg, Dimitris Kolonelos, Benjamin Ostrovsky, Guru-Vamsi Policharla Revocation is essential for keeping encryption secure as keys leak, devices are compromised or users leave the system. We revisit the problem of revocation for encryption schemes and give, to our knowledge, the first approach combining anonymous, collusion-resistant revocation with unchanged keys and access rules, succinct ciphertext overhead and a trustless revocation authority, i.e. that cannot decrypt. Revoking a user publishes one random-looking pseudonym, without telling encryptors whose key was revoked. A party can decrypt future ciphertexts only if it is unrevoked and satisfies the original access decryption rule. Our core observation is that revocation is, at heart, witness encryption for the statement that one satisfies the access rule and that the pseudonym bound to one’s key has not been revoked. Although general-purpose witness encryption remains far from practical, we observe that the statements arising from revocation are simple and algebraic, and we show that they fall within the special-purpose framework of Garg et al. (CRYPTO 2025), which compiles short arguments of knowledge (called “gadgets”) into efficient witness encryption using bilinear groups. Our technical contribution is a pair of succinct non-membership gadgets for this framework, one for a single hidden pseudonym and one that certifies non-revocation jointly for all users selected by an access rule. Both gadgets are generic and modular, as they compose with the gadgets expressing a wide range of access rules, and thus provide a single revocation mechanism that is designed once and reused across different encryption schemes, without redesigning either the scheme or the revocation. These gadgets yield the following applications. First, we give a black-box transformation adding revocation to arbitrary independently instantiated public-key encryption, with constant-size cryptographic ciphertext overhead. For unrevoked users, confidentiality continues to rely only on the security of the underlying scheme. Then, we demonstrate applications to advanced encryption scheme, constructing revocable schemes for distributed broadcast, registered attribute-based, and registered threshold encryption, with succinct cryptographic ciphertext components and threshold decryption shares. We prove adaptive security of our schemes in the generic bilinear-group and random-oracle models.
- The Minimum Bucket Capacity for Reliable Path ORAMon November 10, 2026 at 10:24 pm
ePrint Report: The Minimum Bucket Capacity for Reliable Path ORAM Yijia Chang, Man Ho Au Path ORAM hides memory access patterns by storing $N$ data blocks in a binary tree whose buckets have capacity $Z$, using a client-side stash for blocks that cannot be placed in the tree. Smaller buckets reduce storage and communication costs but increase the risk of stash overflow. The revised Path ORAM analysis in 2014 established an exponentially decreasing stash overflow probability for $Z \geq 5$. Experiments suggest small stashes at $Z=4$ and substantially larger ones at $Z=3$. However, it remained unknown whether $Z=4$ admits a uniform exponential stash bound or whether such a bound is impossible at $Z=3$. We establish a sharp threshold at $Z=4$ for binary Path ORAM with tree depth $L=\lceil \log_2 N \rceil$. For $Z=4$, we prove that, uniformly over all database sizes and fixed access sequences, the stash size $S$ after the final refill satisfies \[ \Pr[S>R] \leq \frac{23}{28}\left(\frac{5}{7}\right)^R \] for every integer $R \geq 0$. For $Z=3$, we exhibit a family of instances on which a single sequential scan of all $N$ blocks produces a stash of size $\Omega(N)$ with probability bounded away from zero. Thus, four is the minimum bucket capacity admitting a uniform exponential stash bound: a logarithmic stash suffices for polynomial-length executions with inverse-polynomial failure probability at $Z=4$, whereas at $Z=3$ no sublinear stash can make the overflow probability vanish uniformly. Our proofs connect the actual Path ORAM process with dependent node loads to an auxiliary model with independent geometric node loads. This independence enables a recursive analysis of overflow that avoids the union bound over rooted subtrees used in the previous $Z=5$ proof. The main challenge is to transfer bounds from the auxiliary model to the actual process, which requires different techniques for the upper and lower bounds. For $Z=4$, we develop a two-stage randomization argument that bounds the actual process’s exponential overflow moment by that of the auxiliary model. For $Z=3$, we develop a local continuous-time approximation with controlled errors that transfers an overflow surplus from the auxiliary model to the actual process, yielding the linear stash lower bound. Together, these arguments establish the sharp threshold at bucket capacity four.
- Designing Quantum-Safe Network Architectures via Certified Randomness Distributionon November 10, 2026 at 10:24 pm
ePrint Report: Designing Quantum-Safe Network Architectures via Certified Randomness Distribution Filip-Ioan Ceară, Diana Maimuţ We propose an alternative design for quantum-safe network architectures, based on distributing certified randomness generated by different trust-level QRNGs. Our modular methodology aggregates high-trust entropy from upper network layers with local contributions, enhancing the security guarantees of locally available random sequences. Leveraging the physical guarantees of QRNGs and symmetric-key cryptographic algorithms for node authentication, our approach enables immediately deployable, quantum-safe infrastructures. Such a paradigm bypasses the practical security limitations of current QKD-based solutions, while avoiding massive key sizes and latency inherent to asymmetric PQC implementations.
- Threshold Batched Attribute-Based Encryption from Succinct LWEon November 10, 2026 at 10:24 pm
ePrint Report: Threshold Batched Attribute-Based Encryption from Succinct LWE Shayeef Murshid, Ramprasad Sarkar, Mriganka Mandal Batched identity-based encryption (BIBE) enables a single compact key to decrypt ciphertexts associated with a designated batch of identities. Batched attribute-based encryption (B-ABE) extends this functionality to attribute-based access control, while threshold batched attribute-based encryption (TB-ABE) further distributes the decryption capability among multiple parties. Existing constructions of TB-ABE rely on bilinear pairings, motivating post-quantum alternatives. In this work, we give, to the best of our knowledge, the first lattice-based candidate construction of TB-ABE. Our construction combines the succinct polynomial-digest mechanism underlying lattice-based BIBE with key-homomorphic evaluation for arithmetic-circuit policies and linear secret sharing. We prove security under the ℓ-succinct LWE assumption, assuming the required share-uniformity property of the underlying ramp threshold sharing scheme.
- Round-Optimal Statistical Verifiable Secret Sharing with Polynomial Complexityon November 10, 2026 at 10:24 pm
ePrint Report: Round-Optimal Statistical Verifiable Secret Sharing with Polynomial Complexity Chen-Da Liu-Zhang, Elisaweta Masserova Verifiable secret sharing (Chor, Goldwasser, Micali, and Awerbuch; FOCS’85) is a central primitive in secure computation, and its round complexity has been studied extensively. Rabin and Ben-Or [STOC’89] established the feasibility of statistical security up to $t We give the first round-optimal statistical VSS that has polynomial communication and computation for $t
- From Degree Three to Degree Two: Statistical Randomized Encodings for All Functionson November 10, 2026 at 10:12 pm
ePrint Report: From Degree Three to Degree Two: Statistical Randomized Encodings for All Functions Emmanuela Orsini, Arpita Patra A randomized encoding represents a function by a simpler randomized map whose output allows recovery of the function value while revealing essentially no further information about the input. Perfectly correct and perfectly private encodings of degree three over $\F_2$ are known for every Boolean function, but degree two cannot provide these guarantees for all functions (Ishai and Kushilevitz, FOCS 2000 and ICALP 2002). Whether degree two suffices when small statistical errors are allowed in both correctness and privacy has remained open. We construct quadratic randomized encodings of every Boolean function with exponentially small correctness and statistical privacy errors. The degree bound holds jointly in the input bits and independent uniform random bits, and the construction, encoder, decoder and simulator have complexity polynomial in the total size of mod-2 branching programs computing the function’s output bits and in the security parameter. Our encodings also achieve decomposability and output locality three, meaning that each encoded bit depends on at most three input and random bits. These results resolve the degree-two and locality-three questions for statistical randomized encodings (Ishai, 2013). As an application, we obtain one-way functions of optimal output locality three from one-way functions in polynomial-time uniform $\mathrm{NC}^1$, improving the previous locality-four result under the same assumption (Applebaum, Ishai and Kushilevitz, FOCS 2004). We also obtain quadratic multiparty randomized encodings with negligible correctness and statistical privacy errors against semi-honest corruption of any coalition of parties. Previous general constructions for $k\ge4$ parties provided perfect correctness and privacy against at most $\lfloor 2k/3\rfloor$ corruptions (Applebaum, Ishai, Karni and Patra, CRYPTO 2022). Through known reductions, our encodings yield non-interactive reductions of every functionality to a fixed three-party functionality and three-round protocols in the two-round OT-hybrid model, with negligible correctness and statistical privacy errors against every coalition. They also yield non-interactive client–server protocols for every function whenever a majority of the servers is honest, even when corrupted servers collude with any set of clients. This server threshold is optimal in this model when privacy is required against arbitrary client coalitions.
- Constructions of Boolean Correctors with Optimal Nonlinearity and Vectorial Correctors Beyond Optimal Linear Correction Orderon November 10, 2026 at 10:00 pm
ePrint Report: Constructions of Boolean Correctors with Optimal Nonlinearity and Vectorial Correctors Beyond Optimal Linear Correction Order Zhaole Li, Deng Tang Correctors are postprocessing functions that reduce or eliminate statistical bias in raw bitstreams produced by physical noise sources in true Random Number Generators. In this paper, we develop a framework based on binary Krawtchouk polynomials for analyzing and constructing Boolean and vectorial correctors. This framework reformulates the Walsh-layer criterion into finite moment constraints on support-layer counts and preimage-layer counts. We also establish universal upper bounds on the nonlinearity of correctors, and yield necessary conditions on the achievable correction order. For Boolean functions, we prove that $(n-1)$-correctors are either parity functions or their complement. Then we characterize the layer profiles of $(n-2)$- and $(n-3)$-correctors and establish upper bounds on their nonlinearity. For $n=2^k\ge 8$, a self-addressing construction yields $(n-2)$-correctors achieving the optimal nonlinearity $2^{n-1}-2^{n-1}/n$ with resiliency $n/2-2$ and algebraic degree $k+1$. Furthermore, using constant-weight addressing, we construct $(n-d-1)$-correctors that asymptotically meet the nonlinearity upper bounds for every fixed $d\ge 1$. Our profile characterization also reveals inherent limitations of injective Maiorana–McFarland constructions at correction order $n-3$. For vectorial functions, we construct nonlinear $(s(2^m-1),m,s2^{m-1}+\ell-1)$-correctors for every $m\ge 2$ under certain conditions on $s$ and $\ell$, with resiliency at most $s2^{m-1}-2$. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first infinite family of nonlinear correctors whose correction order strictly exceeds that of optimal linear corrector. Finally, we introduce a secondary construction that lifts these vectorial correctors to larger input dimensions while preserving their correction-order advantage. This approach yields a nonlinearity of $2^{n-1}-2^{n-n_0-1}$, where $n_0$ is the input dimension of the base corrector, along with explicit resiliency and a flexible algebraic degree.
- Overcoming Padding in Cryptography via Hardness of Certifying Random Stringson November 10, 2026 at 10:00 pm
ePrint Report: Overcoming Padding in Cryptography via Hardness of Certifying Random Strings Yao-Ching Hsieh, Abhishek Jain, Jiatu Li, Surya Mathialagan Modern cryptography relies on a provable security paradigm where the security of a primitive is established from the intractability of one or more computational problems. Hybrid arguments are central to this approach. Somewhat unexpectedly, many security proofs in the literature that use this methodology require hybrids with description-size larger than the real scheme. To argue security, the real scheme is artificially padded to match this size. This so-called “superfluous padding” phenomenon is surprisingly commonplace and poses a barrier to achieving succinct cryptographic primitives where the size of the scheme parameters does not grow with the input length. We present a framework to eliminate padding in cryptography. We demonstrate several applications, including rate-1 iO, succinct (and extractable) witness encryption and succinct non-interactive arguments with short CRS for subclasses of NP, and multi-input functional encryption for functions with unbounded arity. To obtain our results, we establish a new connection between cryptography and proof complexity. Central to our approach is the notion of proof-complexity generators (PCGs) [Krajíček’01, Alekhnovich, Ben-Sasson, Razborov, Wigderson’04], which, informally speaking, formalizes the hardness of certifying random (incompressible) strings with propositional proof systems. Our applications are derived from a master theorem that lifts cryptographic security on “compressible instances” to security on any instance under the existence of PCGs. Due to its broad scope, this theorem might find future application
- Registration-based Encryption with Logarithmic Registrationon November 10, 2026 at 10:00 pm
ePrint Report: Registration-based Encryption with Logarithmic Registration Xingfu Yan, Guiqiu Liao, Fan Yang, Haining Yang, Zheng Gong, Fucai Luo, Bowen Zhao Registration-based encryption (RBE) preserves IBE’s identity-only encryption interface while eliminating key escrow: users generate their own keys, and a Key Curator manages only registered public keys. However, this design introduces a new challenge: user registration, since every joining user rrequires KC to update the registry. Although theoretical RBE constructions achieve polylogarithmic registration, they rely on costly cryptographic techniques and remain impractical. In existing deployable black-box RBE, registration takes $O(\sqrt{N})$ time ($N$ denotes the maximum user capacity). This gap between theoretical registration efficiency and deployability makes registration a key performance bottleneck for large-scale deployments of pairing-based RBE. This work presents a black-box pairing-based RBE construction under the decisional $(R,S,T,f)$-Diffie-Hellman assumption. Build on the multilinear tree, when registering a user’s public key, KC updates only the corresponding root-to-leaf path associated with the user. Therefore, registration in our construction takes $O(\log \sqrt{N})$ time for the maximum user capacity $N$. Moreover, we provides membership and non-membership verification, and their batch verification supports to check registration status of multiple users. Experiments show registration and key generation complete in milliseconds when $N=10^7$. Compared with Glaeser et al. (CCS’23), our scheme accelerates registration by up to \(158\times\) and key generation by up to \(230\times\) with practical overheads.
- Jazzline: Composable CryptoLine Functional Correctness Proofs for Jasmin Programson November 10, 2026 at 10:00 pm
ePrint Report: Jazzline: Composable CryptoLine Functional Correctness Proofs for Jasmin Programs José Bacelar Almeida, Manuel Barbosa, Gilles Barthe, Lionel Blatter, Gustavo Delerue, João Diogo Duarte, Benjamin Gregoire, Tiago Oliveira, Miguel Quaresma, Pierre-Yves Strub, Ming-Hsien Tsai, Bo … Jasmin is a programming language for high-speed and high-assurance cryptography. Correctness proofs of Jasmin programs are typically carried out deductively in EasyCrypt. This allows generality, modularity and composable reasoning, but does not scale well for low-level architecture-specific routines. CryptoLine offers a semi-automatic approach to formally verify algebraically-rich low-level cryptographic routines. CryptoLine proofs are self-contained: they are not integrated into higher-level formal verification developments. This paper shows how to soundly use CryptoLine to discharge subgoals in functional correctness proofs for complex Jasmin programs. We extend Jasmin with annotations and provide an automatic translation into a CryptoLine model, where most complex transformations are certified. We also formalize and implement the automatic extraction of the semantics of a CryptoLine proof
- SoK: Understanding Virtual Machines over Fully Homomorphic Encryptionon November 10, 2026 at 10:00 pm
ePrint Report: SoK: Understanding Virtual Machines over Fully Homomorphic Encryption Song Bian, Ziwei Ma, Yunhao Fu, Haowen Pan, Ruiyu Shen, Zhou Zhang, Ran Mao, Zaidong Li, Yintai Sun, Ruoyi Li, Zhenyu Guan We survey the current literature on fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) from a virtual machine (VM) perspective. We observe that programs behave in an intrinsically different way over FHE than on plaintext, forming a new paradigm of computation that is fundamentally constrained by the obliviousness of data. To better understand the computational properties, we compile more than 125 works to formulate a cross-layer systematic view of FHE VMs, with a special focus on understanding the concrete programming models over encrypted data. In particular, we identify three distinct forms of VMs over FHE, namely, the SISD VM, the SIMD VM, and the hybrid VM. To aid the cross-layer systematization, we also discuss how current FHE compilers and hardware accelerators can be applied to enhance the usability and performance of the respective VMs. In the experiment, we test eight VM instructions with varying precision as well as two end-to-end application programs to quantitatively assess the concrete design trade-offs for each of the VM paradigms. We conclude that FHE VMs of different types exhibit distinct utility and performance characteristics, necessitating new design methodologies to be developed in a cross-layer manner.
- More Keys, Less Commitment: Key-Committing Attacks on BBB Accordions via Encode-then-Encipher and a Key-Committing Transformon November 10, 2026 at 9:48 pm
ePrint Report: More Keys, Less Commitment: Key-Committing Attacks on BBB Accordions via Encode-then-Encipher and a Key-Committing Transform Donghoon Chang, Yukihito Hiraga, Yusuke Naito, Yu Sasaki, Takeshi Sugawara Cryptographic accordions with beyond-birthday-bound (BBB) security are being actively studied in connection with NIST’s ongoing standardization effort. We show that BBB security of an accordion does not necessarily strengthen key commitment of AE built from it: in many BBB accordions, additional keys introduced for BBB security give an adversary extra degrees of freedom. Exploiting this observation, we present $O(1)$ key-committing attacks on a broad range of AE schemes built from BBB accordions, mostly via the Encode-then-Encipher (EtE) paradigm, including CHCTR2, eCTR-based accordions, THCTR, HCTR+, TCT2, and bbb-ddd-AES under a natural polynomial-hash instantiation. To address this issue, we propose CACH, a black-box transform from BBB-secure accordions to robust AE (RAE) with key-committing security. CACH achieves BBB multi-user RAE security and achieves $t/2$-bit key-committing security with a $t$-bit tag for $n \le t \le 2n$ in the ideal-cipher model. CACH uses only AES-based components and supports all AES key sizes, making it compatible with NIST’s design goals. We instantiate CACH with CHCTR2. CACH-CHCTR2 with AES-256 outperforms EtE-HCTR2 with Rijndael-256 and EtE-CHCTR2 for short messages.
- QUASI: Post-Quantum Quorum Attestation of Pre-Validated Statementson November 10, 2026 at 9:12 pm
ePrint Report: QUASI: Post-Quantum Quorum Attestation of Pre-Validated Statements Maksym Ioffe, Dahlia Malkhi We present QUASI, a newly conceived class of protocols that enable a group of parties to produce a publicly verifiable attestation about a pre-validated statement. Designed for quorum-based systems, QUASI enables parties to attest to external entities that the statement is valid. Surprisingly, each party need not sign the entire statement: authenticating only a small subset of symbols suffices for the quorum to attest to the whole. A simple deterministic construction illustrates this possibility. Built purely from hashing and error correction, QUASI achieves small per-party contributions and low attestation generation and verification costs, without relying on SNARKs for aggregation. Our main contribution is a randomized construction achieving reductions of more than $10\times$ in per-party contribution size and hash computations for generation and verification, compared with full hash-based signatures. QUASI is a generic primitive supporting diverse applications. Two principal use cases are external attestation for signature-free consensus, enabling clients to verify statements about committed state; and preprocessing for SNARK-based aggregation, compounding QUASI’s savings with succinct-proof compression.
- Pastel: Single Secret Leader Election with Private Weightson November 10, 2026 at 9:12 pm
ePrint Report: Pastel: Single Secret Leader Election with Private Weights Jung Hee Cheon, Kevin Choi, Intak Hwang, Jaehee Kang, Alireza Kavousi, Junho Lee, Yongdong Yeo A single secret leader election (SSLE) protocol allows an election of exactly one leader among $n$ parties in a secrecy-preserving manner, where only the elected leader knows it has won until it publicly announces and claims leadership. Motivated by proof-of-stake blockchains where stakes are stored in an encrypted or committed form for the sake of privacy, we design and implement the first SSLE protocol with private weights. Each party’s probability of winning an election in our protocol is weighted by stake, and these weights are private. Prior schemes in the literature only allow probabilistic (i.e. expectation of one but can be zero or many leaders) elections in the same setting. Preserving privacy also means public verification is paramount in order for a protocol to be practically reliable. In this respect, our protocol achieves security against malicious adversaries with a concrete implementation. In particular, we concretely implement the needed zero-knowledge proofs and thus do not rely on slashing (financial penalties) to achieve end-to-end malicious security, though slashing can still serve as a performance optimization. Along the way, we observe that previous SSLE protocols in a setting without private weights (either unweighted or with public weights) are either maliciously secure with implementation or post-quantum secure but not both, while our protocol achieves both.
- 7th NIST PQC Standardization Conferenceon November 10, 2026 at 3:24 pm
Event Calendar: 7th NIST PQC Standardization Conference Gaithersburg, USA, 9 June – 11 June 2027 Event date: 9 June to 11 June 2027
- PQCSA summer schoolon November 10, 2026 at 3:24 pm
Event Calendar: PQCSA summer school Eindhoven, Netherlands, 5 April – 9 April 2027 Event date: 5 April to 9 April 2027




