Philipp Muens's Avatar

Philipp Muens

@muens.io

Cryptography R&D @ primefactor.io • Nerd-snipe me with Lattices, Isogenies, Magmas, etc. • Instant Coffee Connoisseur • Webmaster @ muens.io

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12.06.2023
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Latest posts by Philipp Muens @muens.io

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Blind Adaptor Signatures, Revisited: Stronger Security Definitions and Their Construction toward Practical Applications Although both blind signatures and adaptor signatures have individually attracted attention, there is little research on combining these primitives so far. To the best of our knowledge, although the ...

I'm a huge fan of Adaptor Signatures and use them in a project I'm currently working on.

A new paper was just released that studies Blind Adaptor Signatures which is an interesting combination of Blind Signatures and Adaptor Signatures: eprint.iacr.org/2026/060

16.01.2026 15:16 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Go feature: Secret mode Automatically erase memory to prevent secret leaks.

Really excited for the new "Secret Mode" that will land in Go v1.26 and will make operations such as key generation more secure.

antonz.org/accepted/run...

10.01.2026 11:05 👍 7 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
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GitHub - Threshold-ML-DSA/Threshold-ML-DSA Contribute to Threshold-ML-DSA/Threshold-ML-DSA development by creating an account on GitHub.

Here's the GitHub repo: github.com/Threshold-ML...

09.01.2026 09:07 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Efficient Threshold ML-DSA Threshold signature schemes allow a group of users to jointly generate a digital signature, providing resilience against faults and enhancing decentralization. With the advent of post-quantum cryptogr...

Really great to see more research on Threshold ML-DSA (fka Dilithium): eprint.iacr.org/2026/013

The code for the implementation can be found here: zenodo.org/records/1796...

09.01.2026 09:05 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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LifeXP+: Secure, Usable and Reliable Key Recovery for Web3 Applications In the Web2 world, users control their accounts using credentials such as usernames and passwords, which can be reset or recovered by centralized servers if the user loses them. In the decentralized W...

Key recovery is a tricky problem.

This new paper outlines an interesting approach based on natural language stories which utilizes embeddings behind the scenes.

It's an interesting solution at the intersection of Cryptography and Machine Learning.

eprint.iacr.org/2025/2206

08.12.2025 09:58 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
DEF CON 33 - Post Quantum Panic: When Will the Cracking Begin, & Can We Detect it?  - K Karagiannis
DEF CON 33 - Post Quantum Panic: When Will the Cracking Begin, & Can We Detect it? - K Karagiannis YouTube video by DEFCONConference

Very interesting talk when it comes to the SotA of Quantum Computing: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkVY...

25.10.2025 11:28 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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GitHub - TECDSA/ecdsa_two_round Contribute to TECDSA/ecdsa_two_round development by creating an account on GitHub.

Here's the code for their implementation: github.com/TECDSA/ecdsa...

22.09.2025 07:46 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Threshold ECDSA in Two Rounds We propose the first two-round multi-party signing protocol for the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) in the threshold-optimal setting, reducing the number of rounds by one compared t...

Great to see some progress towards a Two-Round ECDSA Threshold Signature Scheme: eprint.iacr.org/2025/1696

22.09.2025 07:44 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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Context-Dependent Threshold Decryption and its Applications In a threshold decryption system a secret key is split across a number of parties so that any threshold of them can decrypt a given ciphertext. We introduce a new concept in threshold decryption call...

This is an interesting paper that allows for a context to be added to Threshold Decryptions: eprint.iacr.org/2025/279

11.09.2025 08:09 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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GitHub - primefactor-io/vtc: Implementation of the Verifiable Timed Commitment scheme Implementation of the Verifiable Timed Commitment scheme - primefactor-io/vtc

Here's a link to the repository and its documentation:

Repository: github.com/primefactor-...
Documentation: pkg.go.dev/github.com/p...

14.08.2025 07:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

To maximize learning I constrained myself to only depend on the standard library and zero 3rd party dependencies.

The whole code is covered with various tests which you can use to see how the implementation can be used in practice.

14.08.2025 07:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

I also had to do a lot of pen-and-paper math to figure out how everything works.

I'm super happy that it's finally out there! I also learned a ton while working on this which is valuable in and of itself.

14.08.2025 07:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Implementing the Verifiable Timed Commitment scheme was definitely a hard nut to crack.

I started working on this late last year, but there were a lot of missing pieces I had to put in place (e.g. implement the Linearly Homomorphic Time-Lock Puzzle first).

14.08.2025 07:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

One could use this in 2/2 multisigs (e.g. Payment Channels).

Before funding the multisig, we could create a signed refund transaction which is timelocked via a VTC.

The VTC can be opened after time t which allows one to refund themselves if the co-signer doesn't cooperate.

14.08.2025 07:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Using this, timelock capabilities can be brought to Blockchains that don't have a scripting language.

It furthermore increases privacy as no data regarding the timelock is stored on-chain (the VTC is shared off-chain).

14.08.2025 07:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

This construction has various applications, but the one I'm focusing on is refund transactions.

Rather than using the Blockchain's scripting language you can share an encrypted signature over a refund transaction off-chain.

This signature can then be recovered after time t.

14.08.2025 07:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Verifiable timed signatures made practical | Cybersecurity Seminars
Verifiable timed signatures made practical | Cybersecurity Seminars YouTube video by Monash Information Technology

The VTC implementation described in the paper is really elegant as it uses Linearly Homomorphic Time-Lock Puzzles to implement the proof via a cut-and-choose mechanism.

I highly recommend you read the paper or watch this presentation to learn more: www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4vO...

14.08.2025 07:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Verifiability is implemented via a proof which guarantees that the value that can be decrypted after time t is the one that was committed to.

In our example we could provide the public key and the proof guarantees that the encrypted private key corresponds to the public key.

14.08.2025 07:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

A Verifiable Timed Commitment (VTC) allows one to commit to a value that's encrypted "into the future".

For example, I can commit to and encrypt a private key in such a way that it can only be decrypted after time t.

14.08.2025 07:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Paper: eprint.iacr.org/2020/1563.pdf
Repository: github.com/primefactor-...
Documentation: pkg.go.dev/github.com/p...

14.08.2025 07:50 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Excited to share my implementation of the paper "Verifiable Timed Signatures Made Practical" by Thyagarajan et al.

More specifically I implemented the Verifiable Timed Commitment scheme described in section E.

14.08.2025 07:50 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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REFHE: Fully Homomorphic ALU We present a fully homomorphic encryption scheme which natively supports arithmetic and logical operations over large "machine words", namely plaintexts of the form $\mathbb{Z}_{2^n}$ (e.g. $n=64$). O...

This is a really interesting FHE paper in which BGV is used to build an ALU to do arithmetic as well as logical operations on messages in Z_2^n (e.g. 64 bit machine words).

eprint.iacr.org/2025/1449

13.08.2025 14:59 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
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Verifiable Timed Signatures Made Practical A verifiable timed signature (VTS) scheme allows one to time-lock a signature on a known message for a given amount of time $T$ such that after performing a sequential computation for time $T$ anyone ...

Currently deep down the rabbit hole to finish my implementation of "Verifiable Timed Signatures Made Practical"

eprint.iacr.org/2020/1563

While doing so I had to update my LHTLP implementation.

It now features a range proof and new homomorphic operations: github.com/primefactor-...

12.08.2025 10:43 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
How to 𝒫𝔩𝔬𝔫𝒦 Interactive 𝒫𝔩𝔬𝔫𝒦 Zero-Knowledge Proof Tutorial

ZKSecurity just dropped this truly awesome PlonK tutorial: plonk.zksecurity.xyz

06.08.2025 12:40 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
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Post-Quantum Readiness in EdDSA Chains The impending threat posed by large-scale quantum computers necessitates a reevaluation of signature schemes deployed in blockchain protocols. In particular, blockchains relying on ECDSA, such as Bitc...

This is an interesting read on how EdDSA's hash-based key derivation (RFC 8032) can be used to compute PQ-ZKPs for private key ownership proofs: eprint.iacr.org/2025/1368

This is good news as it allows for an easier transition towards Post Quantum secure cryptocurrencies.

29.07.2025 06:29 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Foundations of High-Speed Cryptography Course Start with a gentle introduction to core cryptographic primitives, explore the basics of hardware acceleration, and then apply them to build optimized systems with ICICLE.

Ingonyama just published the first three lessons of their "Foundations of High-Speed Cryptography" course 👀

www.ingonyama.com/foundations-...

23.07.2025 06:33 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Cryptography and Security

That would be awesome!

For me first thing in the morning is checking the new publications on eprint.iacr.org (also followed arxiv.org/list/cs.CR/recent but there’s too much noise IMHO).

18.07.2025 06:09 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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ZHE: Efficient Zero-Knowledge Proofs for HE Evaluations Homomorphic Encryption (HE) allows computations on encrypted data without decryption. It can be used where the users’ information are to be processed by an untrustful server, and has been a popular ch...

This paper looks really interesting:

eprint.iacr.org/2025/770

ZKPs for (F)HE Schemes based on Ring-LWE.

FHE + ZKPs are a dream combo.

18.07.2025 06:05 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Diamond iO: Lattice-Based Obfuscation without Bootstrapping from Functional Encryption, toward...
Diamond iO: Lattice-Based Obfuscation without Bootstrapping from Functional Encryption, toward... YouTube video by Simons Institute

The recording of the Diamond iO talk by the Machina iO team that was held during the Simon Institute's "Obfuscation" workshop was just uploaded: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RcK...

09.07.2025 14:07 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

This is a great paper that explains how to obtain indistinguishability obfuscation (iO) via recursive Functional Encryption: piazza.com/class_profil...

It's basically a simplified version of the [BV15] paper: eprint.iacr.org/2015/163

04.07.2025 08:29 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0