RFC 9591: The Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold (FROST) Protocol for Two-Round Schnorr Signatures
- D. Connolly,
- C. Komlo,
- I. Goldberg,
- C. A. Wood
Abstract
This document specifies the Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold (FROST) signing protocol. FROST signatures can be issued after a threshold number of entities cooperate to compute a signature, allowing for improved distribution of trust and redundancy with respect to a secret key. FROST depends only on a prime-order group and cryptographic hash function. This document specifies a number of ciphersuites to instantiate FROST using different prime-order groups and hash functions. This document is a product of the Crypto Forum Research Group (CFRG) in the IRTF.¶
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes.¶
This document is a product of the Internet Research Task Force
(IRTF). The IRTF publishes the results of Internet
Information about the current status of this document, any
errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2024 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.¶
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
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1. Introduction
Unlike signatures in a single-party setting, threshold signatures require cooperation among a threshold number of signing participants, each holding a share of a common private key. The security of threshold schemes in general assumes that an adversary can corrupt strictly fewer than a threshold number of signer participants.¶
This document specifies the Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold (FROST) signing protocol based on the original work in [FROST20]. FROST reduces network overhead during threshold signing operations while employing a novel technique to protect against forgery attacks applicable to prior Schnorr-based threshold signature constructions. FROST requires two rounds to compute a signature. Single-round signing variants based on [FROST20] are out of scope.¶
FROST depends only on a prime-order group and cryptographic hash
function. This document specifies a number of ciphersuites to
instantiate FROST using different prime-order groups and hash functions.
Two ciphersuites can be used to produce signatures that are compatible
with Edwards-Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA) variants Ed25519
and Ed448 as specified in [RFC8032], i.e., the signatures
can be verified with a verifier that is compliant with [RFC8032].
However, unlike EdDSA, the signatures produced by FROST are
not deterministic, since deriving nonces deterministical
Key generation for FROST signing is out of scope for this document. However, for completeness, key generation with a trusted dealer is specified in Appendix C.¶
This document represents the consensus of the Crypto Forum Research Group (CFRG). It is not an IETF product and is not a standard.¶
2. Conventions and Definitions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶
The following notation is used throughout the document.¶
- byte:
- A sequence of eight bits.¶
-
random_bytes(n): - Outputs
nbytes, sampled uniformly at random using a cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator (CSPRNG).¶ -
count(i, L): - Outputs the number of times the element
iis represented in the listL.¶ -
len(l): - Outputs the length of list
l, e.g.,len([1,2,3]) = 3.¶ -
reverse(l): - Outputs the list
lin reverse order, e.g.,reverse([1,2,3]) = [3,2,1].¶ -
range(a, b): - Outputs a list of integers from
atob-1in ascending order, e.g.,range(1, 4) = [1,2,3].¶ -
pow(a, b): - Outputs the
result, a Scalar, of
ato the power ofb, e.g.,pow(2, 3) = 8modulo the relevant group orderp.¶ - ||:
- Denotes concatenation of byte strings, i.e.,
x || ydenotes the byte stringx, immediately followed by the byte stringy, with no extra separator, yieldingxy.¶ - nil:
- Denotes an empty byte string.¶
Unless otherwise stated, we assume that secrets are sampled uniformly at random using a CSPRNG; see [RFC4086] for additional guidance on the generation of random numbers.¶
3. Cryptographic Dependencies
FROST signing depends on the following cryptographic constructs:¶
The following sections describe these constructs in more detail.¶
3.1. Prime-Order Group
FROST depends on an abelian group of prime order p. We represent this
group as the object G that additionally defines helper functions described below. The group operation
for G is addition + with identity element I. For any elements A and B of the group G,
A + B = B + A is also a member of G. Also, for any A in G, there exists an element
-A such that A + (-A) = (-A) + A = I. For convenience, we use - to denote
subtraction, e.g., A - B = A + (-B). Integers, taken modulo the group order p, are called
"Scalars"; arithmetic operations on Scalars are implicitly performed modulo p. Since p is prime,
Scalars form a finite field. Scalar multiplication is equivalent to the repeated
application of the group operation on an element A with itself r-1 times, denoted as
ScalarMult(A, r). We denote the sum, difference, and product of two Scalars using the +, -,
and * operators, respectively. (Note that this means + may refer to group element addition or
Scalar addition, depending on the type of the operands.) For any element A, ScalarMult(A, p) = I.
We denote B as a fixed generator of the group. Scalar base multiplication is equivalent to the repeated application
of the group operation on B with itself r-1 times, denoted as Scalar. The set of
Scalars corresponds to GF(p), which we refer to as the Scalar field. It is assumed that
group element addition, negation, and equality comparison can be efficiently computed for
arbitrary group elements.¶
This document uses types Element and Scalar to denote elements of the group G and
its set of Scalars, respectively. We denote Scalar(x) as the conversion of integer input x
to the corresponding Scalar value with the same numeric value. For example, Scalar(1) yields
a Scalar representing the value 1. Moreover, we use the type NonZeroScalar to denote a Scalar
value that is not equal to zero, i.e., Scalar(0). We denote equality comparison of these types
as == and assignment of values by =. When comparing Scalar values, e.g., for the purposes
of sorting lists of Scalar values, the least nonnegative representation mod p is used.¶
We now detail a number of member functions that can be invoked on G.¶
- Order():
- Outputs the order of
G(i.e.,p).¶ - Identity():
- Outputs the identity
Elementof the group (i.e.,I).¶ - RandomScalar():
- Outputs a random
Scalarelement in GF(p), i.e., a random Scalar in [0, p - 1].¶ - ScalarMult(A, k):
- Outputs the Scalar multiplication between Element
Aand Scalark.¶ - Scalar
Base Mult (k ): - Outputs the Scalar multiplication between Scalar
kand the group generatorB.¶ - Serialize
Element (A ): - Maps an
ElementAto a canonical byte arraybufof fixed lengthNe. This function raises an error ifAis the identity element of the group.¶ - Deserialize
Element (buf ): - Attempts to map a byte array
bufto anElementAand fails if the input is not the valid canonical byte representation of an element of the group. This function raises an error if deserialization fails or ifAis the identity element of the group; see Section 6 for group-specific input validation steps.¶ - Serialize
Scalar (s ): - Maps a Scalar
sto a canonical byte arraybufof fixed lengthNs.¶ - Deserialize
Scalar (buf ): - Attempts to map a byte array
bufto aScalars. This function raises an error if deserialization fails; see Section 6 for group-specific input validation steps.¶
3.2. Cryptographic Hash Function
FROST requires the use of
a cryptographical
The details of H1, H2, H3, H4, and H5 vary based on the ciphersuite used. See Section 6 for more details about each.¶
4. Helper Functions
Beyond the core dependencies, the protocol in this document depends on the following helper operations:¶
The following sections describe these operations in more detail.¶
4.1. Nonce Generation
To hedge against a bad random number generator (RNG) that outputs predictable values, nonces are
generated with the nonce_generate function by combining fresh randomness
with the secret key as input to a domainH. This domainH3. This function always samples 32 bytes of fresh randomness
to ensure that the probability of nonce reuse is at most 2-128
as long as no more than 264 signatures are computed by a given
signing participant.¶
4.2. Polynomials
This section defines polynomials over Scalars that are used in the main protocol.
A polynomial of maximum degree t is represented as a list of t+1 coefficients,
where the constant term of the polynomial is in the first position and the
highest-degree coefficient is in the last position. For example, the polynomial
x2 + 2x + 3 has degree 2 and is represented as a list of three coefficients [3, 2, 1].
A point on the polynomial f is a tuple (x, y), where y = f(x).¶
The function derive derives a value that is used for polynomial
interpolation.
It is provided a list of x-coordinates as input, each of which
cannot equal 0.¶
4.3. List Operations
This section describes helper functions that work on lists of values produced during the FROST protocol. The following function encodes a list of participant commitments into a byte string for use in the FROST protocol.¶
The following function is used to extract identifiers from a commitment list.¶
The following function is used to extract a binding factor from a list of binding factors.¶
4.4. Binding Factors Computation
This section describes the subroutine for computing binding factors based on the participant commitment list, message to be signed, and group public key.¶
4.5. Group Commitment Computation
This section describes the subroutine for creating the group commitment from a commitment list.¶
Note that the performance of this algorithm is defined
naively and scales linearly relative to the number of signers. For improved
performance, the group commitment can be computed using multi
4.6. Signature Challenge Computation
This section describes the subroutine for creating the per-message challenge.¶
5. Two-Round FROST Signing Protocol
This section describes the two-round FROST signing protocol for producing Schnorr signatures.
The protocol is configured to run with a selection of NUM_PARTICIPANTS signer participants and a Coordinator.
NUM_PARTICIPANTS is a positive and
non-zero integer that MUST be at least
MIN_PARTICIPANTS, but MUST NOT be larger than
MAX_PARTICIPANTS, where MIN_PARTICIPANTS <=
MAX and MIN_PARTICIPANTS is a positive and non-zero
integer. Additionally, MAX_PARTICIPANTS MUST be a positive
integer less than the group order.
A signer participant, or simply
"participant", is an entity that is trusted to hold and use a signing key
share. The Coordinator is an entity with the following responsibilitie
FROST assumes that the Coordinator and the set of signer participants are chosen externally to the protocol. Note that it is possible to deploy the protocol without designating a single Coordinator; see Section 7.5 for more information.¶
FROST produces signatures that can be verified as if they were produced from a single signer
using a signing key s with corresponding public key PK, where s is a Scalar
value and PK = G. As a threshold signing protocol, the group signing
key s is Shamir secret-shared amongst each of the MAX_PARTICIPANTS participants
and is used to produce signatures; see Appendix C.1 for more information about Shamir secret sharing.
In particular, FROST assumes each participant is configured with the following information:¶
Additionally, the Coordinator and each participant are configured with common group information, denoted as "group info," which consists of the following:¶
This document does not specify how this information, including the signing key shares, are configured and distributed to participants. In general, two configuration mechanisms are possible: one that requires a single trusted dealer and one that requires performing a distributed key generation protocol. We highlight the key generation mechanism by a trusted dealer in Appendix C for reference.¶
FROST requires two rounds to complete. In the first round,
participants generate and publish one-time-use commitments to be used in
the second round. In the second round, each participant produces a share
of the signature over the Coordinator
Details for round one are described in Section 5.1 and details for round two are described in Section 5.2. Note that each participant persists some state between the two rounds; this state is deleted as described in Section 5.2. The final Aggregation step is described in Section 5.3.¶
FROST assumes that all inputs to each round, especially those that are received
over the network, are validated before use.
In particular, this means that any value of type Element or Scalar received
over the network MUST be deserialized using Deserialize
FROST assumes reliable message delivery between the Coordinator and participants in order for the protocol to complete. An attacker masquerading as another participant will result only in an invalid signature; see Section 7. However, in order to identify misbehaving participants, we assume that the network channel is additionally authenticated; confidentiality is not required.¶
5.1. Round One - Commitment
Round one involves each participant generating nonces and their corresponding public commitments.
A nonce is a pair of Scalar values, and a commitment is a pair of Element values. Each participant's behavior in this round is described by the commit function below. Note that this function invokes nonce_generate twice, once for each type of nonce produced. The output of this function is a pair of secret nonces (hiding_nonce, binding_nonce) and their corresponding public commitments
(hiding.¶
The outputs nonce and comm from participant P_i are both stored locally and
kept for use in the second round. The nonce value is secret and MUST NOT be shared, whereas
the public output comm is sent to the Coordinator. The nonce values produced by this function MUST NOT be used in more than one invocation of sign, and the nonces MUST be generated
from a source of secure randomness.¶
5.2. Round Two - Signature Share Generation
In round two, the Coordinator is responsible for sending the message to be signed and choosing the participants that will participate (a number of at least MIN
The Coordinator begins by sending each participant the message to be signed along with the set of signing commitments for all participants in the participant list. Each participant
MUST validate the inputs before processing the Coordinator's request. In particular,
the signer MUST validate commitment
Upon receipt and successful input validation, each signer then runs the following procedure to produce its own signature share.¶
The output of this procedure is a signature share. Each participant sends
these shares back to the Coordinator. Each participant MUST delete the nonce and
corresponding commitment after completing sign and MUST NOT use the nonce
as input more than once to sign.¶
Note that the lambda_i value derived during this procedure does not change
across FROST signing operations for the same signing group. As such, participants
can compute it once and store it for reuse across signing sessions.¶
5.3. Signature Share Aggregation
After participants perform round two and send their signature shares to the Coordinator,
the Coordinator aggregates each share to produce a final signature. Before aggregating,
the Coordinator MUST validate each signature share using Deserialize
The output from the aggregation step is the output signature (R, z). The canonical encoding of this signature is specified in Section 6.¶
The Coordinator SHOULD verify this signature using the group public key before publishing or releasing the signature. Signature verification is as specified for the corresponding ciphersuite; see Section 6 for details. The aggregate signature will verify successfully if all signature shares are valid. Moreover, subsets of valid signature shares will not yield a valid aggregate signature themselves.¶
If the aggregate signature verification fails, the Coordinator MAY verify each signature share individually to identify and act on misbehaving participants. The mechanism for acting on a misbehaving participant is out of scope for this specification; see Section 5.4 for more information about dealing with invalid signatures and misbehaving participants.¶
The function for verifying a signature share, denoted as verify, is described below.
Recall that the Coordinator is configured with "group info" that contains
the group public key PK and public keys PK_i for each participant. The group_public_key and
PK_i function arguments MUST come from that previously stored group info.¶
The Coordinator can verify each signature share before aggregating and verifying the signature under the group public key. However, since the aggregate signature is valid if all signature shares are valid, this order of operations is more expensive if the signature is valid.¶
5.4. Identifiable Abort
FROST does not provide robustness; i.e, all participants are required to complete the protocol honestly in order to generate a valid signature. When the signing protocol does not produce a valid signature, the Coordinator SHOULD abort; see Section 7 for more information about FROST's security properties and the threat model.¶
As a result of this property, a misbehaving participant can cause a denial of service (DoS) on
the signing protocol by contributing malformed signature shares or refusing to participate.
Identifying misbehaving participants that produce invalid shares can be done by checking
signature shares from each participant using verify as described in Section 5.3.
FROST assumes the network channel is authenticated to identify the signer that misbehaved.
FROST allows for identifying misbehaving participants that produce invalid signature shares
as described in Section 5.3. FROST does not provide accommodations for identifying
participants that refuse to participate, though applications are assumed to detect when participants
fail to engage in the signing protocol.¶
In both cases, preventing this type of attack requires the Coordinator to identify misbehaving participants such that applications can take corrective action. The mechanism for acting on misbehaving participants is out of scope for this specification. However, one reasonable approach would be to remove the misbehaving participant from the set of allowed participants in future runs of FROST.¶
6. Ciphersuites
A FROST ciphersuite must specify the underlying prime-order group details
and cryptographic hash function. Each ciphersuite is denoted as (Group, Hash),
e.g., (ristretto255, SHA-512). This section contains some ciphersuites.
Each ciphersuite also includes a context string, denoted as contextString,
which is an ASCII string literal (with no terminating NUL character).¶
The RECOMMENDED ciphersuite is (ristretto255, SHA-512) as described in Section 6.2. The (Ed25519, SHA-512) and (Ed448, SHAKE256) ciphersuites are included for compatibility with Ed25519 and Ed448 as defined in [RFC8032].¶
The Deserialize
Each ciphersuite includes explicit instructions for verifying signatures produced by FROST. Note that these instructions are equivalent to those produced by a single participant.¶
Each ciphersuite adheres to the requirements in Section 6.6. Future ciphersuites MUST also adhere to these requirements.¶
6.1. FROST(Ed25519, SHA-512)
This ciphersuite uses edwards25519 for the Group and SHA-512 for the hash function H
meant to produce Ed25519
- Group:
-
edwards25519 [RFC8032], where Ne = 32 and Ns = 32.¶
- Order():
- Return 2252 + 277423177773723
5353585193779088 3648493 (see [RFC7748]).¶ - Identity():
- As defined in [RFC7748].¶
- RandomScalar():
- Implemented by returning a uniformly random Scalar in the range
[0,
G.Order()- 1]. Refer to Appendix D for implementation guidance.¶ - Serialize
Element (A ): - Implemented as specified in [RFC8032], Section 5.1.2. Additionally, this function validates that the input element is not the group identity element.¶
- Deserialize
Element (buf ): - Implemented as specified in [RFC8032], Section 5.1.3. Additionally, this function validates that the resulting element is not the group identity element and is in the prime-order subgroup. If any of these checks fail, deserialization returns an error. The latter check can be implemented by multiplying the resulting point by the order of the group and checking that the result is the identity element. Note that optimizations for this check exist; see [Pornin22].¶
- Serialize
Scalar (s ): - Implemented by outputting the little-endian 32-byte encoding of the Scalar value with the top three bits set to zero.¶
- Deserialize
Scalar (buf ): - Implemented by attempting to deserialize a Scalar from a
little-endian 32-byte string. This function can fail if the input does not
represent a Scalar in the range [0,
G.Order()- 1]. Note that this means the top three bits of the input MUST be zero.¶
- Hash (
H): -
SHA-512, which has an output of 64 bytes.¶
- H1(m):
- Implemented by computing H(contextString || "rho" || m), interpreting the 64-byte digest
as a little-endian integer, and reducing the resulting integer modulo
2252 + 277423177773723
5353585193779088 3648493 .¶ - H2(m):
- Implemented by computing H(m), interpreting the 64-byte digest
as a little-endian integer, and reducing the resulting integer modulo
2252 + 277423177773723
5353585193779088 3648493 .¶ - H3(m):
- Implemented by computing H(contextString || "nonce" || m), interpreting the 64-byte digest
as a little-endian integer, and reducing the resulting integer modulo
2252 + 277423177773723
5353585193779088 3648493 .¶ - H4(m):
- Implemented by computing H(contextString || "msg" || m).¶
- H5(m):
- Implemented by computing H(contextString || "com" || m).¶
Normally, H2 would also include a domain separator; however, for compatibility with [RFC8032], it is omitted.¶
Signature verification is as specified in Section 5.1.7 of [RFC8032] with the
constraint that implementations MUST check the group equation [8][z]B = [8]R + [8][c]PK
(changed to use the notation in this document).¶
Canonical signature encoding is as specified in Appendix A.¶
6.2. FROST(ristretto255, SHA-512)
This ciphersuite uses ristretto255 for the Group and SHA-512 for the hash function H.
The value of the contextString parameter is "FROST
- Group:
-
ristretto255 [RISTRETTO], where Ne = 32 and Ns = 32.¶
- Order():
- Return 2252 + 277423177773723
5353585193779088 3648493 (see [RISTRETTO]).¶ - Identity():
- As defined in [RISTRETTO].¶
- RandomScalar():
- Implemented by returning a uniformly random Scalar in the range
[0,
G.Order()- 1]. Refer to Appendix D for implementation guidance.¶ - Serialize
Element (A ): - Implemented using the "Encode" function from [RISTRETTO]. Additionally, this function validates that the input element is not the group identity element.¶
- Deserialize
Element (buf ): - Implemented using the "Decode" function from [RISTRETTO]. Additionally, this function validates that the resulting element is not the group identity element. If either the "Decode" function or the check fails, deserialization returns an error.¶
- Serialize
Scalar (s ): - Implemented by outputting the little-endian 32-byte encoding of the Scalar value with the top three bits set to zero.¶
- Deserialize
Scalar (buf ): - Implemented by attempting to deserialize a Scalar from a
little-endian 32-byte string. This function can fail if the input does not
represent a Scalar in the range [0,
G.Order()- 1]. Note that this means the top three bits of the input MUST be zero.¶
- Hash (
H): -
SHA-512, which has 64 bytes of output.¶
- H1(m):
- Implemented by computing H(contextString || "rho" || m) and mapping the output to a Scalar as described in [RISTRETTO], Section 4.4.¶
- H2(m):
- Implemented by computing H(contextString || "chal" || m) and mapping the output to a Scalar as described in [RISTRETTO], Section 4.4.¶
- H3(m):
- Implemented by computing H(contextString || "nonce" || m) and mapping the output to a Scalar as described in [RISTRETTO], Section 4.4.¶
- H4(m):
- Implemented by computing H(contextString || "msg" || m).¶
- H5(m):
- Implemented by computing H(contextString || "com" || m).¶
Signature verification is as specified in Appendix B.¶
Canonical signature encoding is as specified in Appendix A.¶
6.3. FROST(Ed448, SHAKE256)
This ciphersuite uses edwards448 for the Group and SHAKE256 for the hash function H
meant to produce Ed448-compliant signatures as specified in Section 5.2 of [RFC8032].
Unlike Ed448 in [RFC8032], this ciphersuite does not allow applications to
specify a context string and always sets the context of [RFC8032] to the empty string.
Note that this ciphersuite does not allow applications to specify a context
string as is allowed for Ed448 in [RFC8032], and always sets
the [RFC8032] context string to the empty string. The value of
the (internal to FROST) contextString parameter is
"FROST
- Group:
-
edwards448 [RFC8032], where Ne = 57 and Ns = 57.¶
- Order():
- Return 2446 - 138180668098951
1535200738674851 5426880336692474 8821786098945475 03885 .¶ - Identity():
- As defined in [RFC7748].¶
- RandomScalar():
- Implemented by returning a uniformly random Scalar in the range
[0,
G.Order()- 1]. Refer to Appendix D for implementation guidance.¶ - Serialize
Element (A ): - Implemented as specified in [RFC8032], Section 5.2.2. Additionally, this function validates that the input element is not the group identity element.¶
- Deserialize
Element (buf ): - Implemented as specified in [RFC8032], Section 5.2.3. Additionally, this function validates that the resulting element is not the group identity element and is in the prime-order subgroup. If any of these checks fail, deserialization returns an error. The latter check can be implemented by multiplying the resulting point by the order of the group and checking that the result is the identity element. Note that optimizations for this check exist; see [Pornin22].¶
- Serialize
Scalar (s ): - Implemented by outputting the little-endian 57-byte encoding of the Scalar value.¶
- Deserialize
Scalar (buf ): - Implemented by attempting to deserialize a Scalar from a
little-endian 57-byte string. This function can fail if the input does not
represent a Scalar in the range [0,
G.Order()- 1].¶
- Hash (
H): -
SHAKE256 with 114 bytes of output.¶
- H1(m):
- Implemented by computing H(contextString || "rho" || m), interpreting the
114-byte digest as a little-endian integer, and reducing the resulting integer modulo
2446 - 138180668098951
1535200738674851 5426880336692474 8821786098945475 03885 .¶ - H2(m):
- Implemented by computing H("SigEd448" || 0 || 0 || m), interpreting
the 114-byte digest as a little-endian integer, and reducing the resulting integer
modulo 2446 - 138180668098951
1535200738674851 5426880336692474 8821786098945475 03885 .¶ - H3(m):
- Implemented by computing H(contextString || "nonce" || m), interpreting the
114-byte digest as a little-endian integer, and reducing the resulting integer modulo
2446 - 138180668098951
1535200738674851 5426880336692474 8821786098945475 03885 .¶ - H4(m):
- Implemented by computing H(contextString || "msg" || m).¶
- H5(m):
- Implemented by computing H(contextString || "com" || m).¶
Normally, H2 would also include a domain separator. However, it is omitted for compatibility with [RFC8032].¶
Signature verification is as specified in Section 5.2.7 of [RFC8032] with the
constraint that implementations MUST check the group equation [4][z]B = [4]R + [4][c]PK
(changed to use the notation in this document).¶
Canonical signature encoding is as specified in Appendix A.¶
6.4. FROST(P-256, SHA-256)
This ciphersuite uses P-256 for the Group and SHA-256 for the hash function H.
The value of the contextString parameter is "FROST
- Group:
-
P-256 (secp256r1) [x9.62], where Ne = 33 and Ns = 32.¶
- Order():
- Return 0xffffffff00000
000fffffffffffff fffbce6faada7179 e84f3b9cac2fc632 551 .¶ - Identity():
- As defined in [x9.62].¶
- RandomScalar():
- Implemented by returning a uniformly random Scalar in the range
[0,
G.Order()- 1]. Refer to Appendix D for implementation guidance.¶ - Serialize
Element (A ): - Implemented using the compressed Elliptic
-Curve -Point -to -Octet -String method according to [SEC1], yielding a 33-byte output. Additionally, this function validates that the input element is not the group identity element.¶ - Deserialize
Element (buf ): - Implemented by attempting to deserialize a 33-byte input string to
a public key using the compressed Octet
-String -to -Elliptic -Curve -Point method according to [SEC1] and then performing public key validation as defined in Section 3.2.2.1 of [SEC1]. This includes checking that the coordinates of the resulting point are in the correct range, that the point is on the curve, and that the point is not the point at infinity. (As noted in the specification, validation of the point order is not required since the cofactor is 1.) If any of these checks fail, deserialization returns an error.¶ - Serialize
Scalar (s ): - Implemented using the Field
-Element -to -Octet -String conversion according to [SEC1].¶ - Deserialize
Scalar (buf ): - Implemented by attempting to deserialize a Scalar from a 32-byte
string using Octet
-String -to -Field -Element from [SEC1]. This function can fail if the input does not represent a Scalar in the range [0, G.Order()- 1].¶
- Hash (
H): -
SHA-256, which has 32 bytes of output.¶
- H1(m):
- Implemented as hash
_to _field (m, 1) (see [HASH-TO-CURVE], Section 5.2) using expandwith SHA-256 with parameters DST = contextString || "rho", F set to the Scalar field, p set to_message _xmd G.Order(), m = 1, and L = 48.¶ - H2(m):
- Implemented as hash
_to _field (m, 1) (see [HASH-TO-CURVE], Section 5.2) using expandwith SHA-256 with parameters DST = contextString || "chal", F set to the Scalar field, p set to_message _xmd G.Order(), m = 1, and L = 48.¶ - H3(m):
- Implemented as hash
_to _field (m, 1) (see [HASH-TO-CURVE], Section 5.2) using expandwith SHA-256 with parameters DST = contextString || "nonce", F set to the Scalar field, p set to_message _xmd G.Order(), m = 1, and L = 48.¶ - H4(m):
- Implemented by computing H(contextString || "msg" || m).¶
- H5(m):
- Implemented by computing H(contextString || "com" || m).¶
Signature verification is as specified in Appendix B.¶
Canonical signature encoding is as specified in Appendix A.¶
6.5. FROST(secp256k1, SHA-256)
This ciphersuite uses secp256k1 for the Group and SHA-256 for the hash function H.
The value of the contextString parameter is "FROST
- Group:
-
secp256k1 [SEC2], where Ne = 33 and Ns = 32.¶
- Order():
- Return 0xfffffffffffff
ffffffffffffffff ffebaaedce6af48a 03bbfd25e8cd0364 141 .¶ - Identity():
- As defined in [SEC2].¶
- RandomScalar():
- Implemented by returning a uniformly random Scalar in the range
[0,
G.Order()- 1]. Refer to Appendix D for implementation guidance.¶ - Serialize
Element (A ): - Implemented using the compressed Elliptic
-Curve -Point -to -Octet -String method according to [SEC1], yielding a 33-byte output. Additionally, this function validates that the input element is not the group identity element.¶ - Deserialize
Element (buf ): - Implemented by attempting to deserialize a 33-byte input string to
a public key using the compressed Octet
-String -to -Elliptic -Curve -Point method according to [SEC1] and then performing public key validation as defined in Section 3.2.2.1 of [SEC1]. This includes checking that the coordinates of the resulting point are in the correct range, the point is on the curve, and the point is not the point at infinity. (As noted in the specification, validation of the point order is not required since the cofactor is 1.) If any of these checks fail, deserialization returns an error.¶ - Serialize
Scalar (s ): - Implemented using the Field
-Element -to -Octet -String conversion according to [SEC1].¶ - Deserialize
Scalar (buf ): - Implemented by attempting to deserialize a Scalar from a 32-byte
string using Octet
-String -to -Field -Element from [SEC1]. This function can fail if the input does not represent a Scalar in the range [0, G.Order()- 1].¶
- Hash (
H): -
SHA-256, which has 32 bytes of output.¶
- H1(m):
- Implemented as hash
_to _field (m, 1) (see [HASH-TO-CURVE], Section 5.2) using expandwith SHA-256 with parameters DST = contextString || "rho", F set to the Scalar field, p set to_message _xmd G.Order(), m = 1, and L = 48.¶ - H2(m):
- Implemented as hash
_to _field (m, 1) (see [HASH-TO-CURVE], Section 5.2) using expandwith SHA-256 with parameters DST = contextString || "chal", F set to the Scalar field, p set to_message _xmd G.Order(), m = 1, and L = 48.¶ - H3(m):
- Implemented as hash
_to _field (m, 1) (see [HASH-TO-CURVE], Section 5.2) using expandwith SHA-256 with parameters DST = contextString || "nonce", F set to the Scalar field, p set to_message _xmd G.Order(), m = 1, and L = 48.¶ - H4(m):
- Implemented by computing H(contextString || "msg" || m).¶
- H5(m):
- Implemented by computing H(contextString || "com" || m).¶
Signature verification is as specified in Appendix B.¶
Canonical signature encoding is as specified in Appendix A.¶
6.6. Ciphersuite Requirements
Future documents that introduce new ciphersuites MUST adhere to the following requirements.¶
7. Security Considerations
A security analysis of FROST is documented in [FROST20] and [StrongerSec22]. At a high level, FROST provides security against Existential Unforgeability Under Chosen Message Attacks (EUF-CMA) as defined in [StrongerSec22]. To satisfy this requirement, the ciphersuite needs to adhere to the requirements in Section 6.6 and the following assumptions must hold.¶
Note that the Coordinator is not trusted with any private information, and communication at the time of signing can be performed over a public channel as long as it is authenticated and reliable.¶
FROST provides security against DoS attacks under the following assumptions:¶
FROST does not aim to achieve the following goals:¶
The rest of this section documents issues particular to implementations or deployments.¶
7.1. Side-Channel Mitigations
Several routines process secret values (nonces, signing keys / shares), and depending
on the implementation and deployment environment, mitigating side-channels may be
pertinent. Mitigating these side-channels requires implementing G.ScalarMult(), G,
G, and G in constant
7.2. Optimizations
[StrongerSec22] presented an optimization to FROST that reduces the total number of Scalar multiplications from linear in the number of signing participants to a constant. However, as described in [StrongerSec22], this optimization removes the guarantee that the set of signer participants that started round one of the protocol is the same set of signing participants that produced the signature output by round two. As such, the optimization is NOT RECOMMENDED and is not covered in this document.¶
7.3. Nonce Reuse Attacks
Section 4.1 describes the procedure that participants use to produce nonces during
the first round of signing. The randomness produced in this procedure MUST be sampled
uniformly at random. The resulting nonces produced via nonce_generate are indistinguishab
7.4. Protocol Failures
We do not specify what implementations should do when the protocol fails other than requiring the protocol to abort. Examples of viable failures include when a verification check returns invalid or the underlying transport failed to deliver the required messages.¶
7.5. Removing the Coordinator Role
In some settings, it may be desirable to omit the role of the Coordinator entirely. Doing so does not change the security implications of FROST; instead, it simply requires each participant to communicate with all other participants. We loosely describe how to perform FROST signing among participants without this coordinator role. We assume that every participant receives a message to be signed from an external source as input prior to performing the protocol.¶
Every participant begins by performing commit() as is done in the setting
where a Coordinator is used. However, instead of sending the commitment
to the Coordinator, every participant will publish this commitment to every other participant. In the second round, participants will already have sufficient information to perform signing, and they will directly perform sign(). All participants will then publish their signature shares to one another. After having received all signature shares from all other participants, each participant will then perform verify and then aggregate directly.¶
The requirements for the underlying network channel remain the same in the setting where all participants play the role of the Coordinator, in that all exchanged messages are public and the channel must be reliable. However, in the setting where a player attempts to split the view of all other players by sending disjoint values to a subset of players, the signing operation will output an invalid signature. To avoid this DoS, implementations may wish to define a mechanism where messages are authenticated so that cheating players can be identified and excluded.¶
7.6. Input Message Hashing
FROST signatures do not pre-hash message inputs. This means that
the entire message must be known in advance of invoking the signing
protocol. Applications can apply pre-hashing in settings where storing
the full message is prohibitively expensive. In such cases,
pre-hashing MUST use a collisionH) associated with the chosen ciphersuite in a
manner similar to how H4 is defined. In particular, a
different prefix SHOULD be used to differentiate this
pre-hash from H4. For example, if a fictional protocol Quux
decided to pre-hash its input messages, one possible way to do so is
via H(contextString || "Quux-pre-hash" || m).¶
7.7. Input Message Validation
Message validation varies by application. For example, some applications may require that participants only process messages of a certain structure. In digital currency applications, wherein multiple participants may collectively sign a transaction, it is reasonable to require each participant to check that the input message is a syntactically valid transaction.¶
As another example, some applications may require that participants only process messages with permitted content according to some policy. In digital currency applications, this might mean that a transaction being signed is allowed and intended by the relevant stakeholders. Another instance of this type of message validation is in the context of [TLS], wherein implementations may use threshold signing protocols to produce signatures of transcript hashes. In this setting, signing participants might require the raw TLS handshake messages to validate before computing the transcript hash that is signed.¶
In general, input message validation is an application
8. IANA Considerations
This document has no IANA actions.¶
9. References
9.1. Normative References
- [HASH-TO-CURVE]
-
Faz-Hernandez, A., Scott, S., Sullivan, N., Wahby, R. S., and C. A. Wood, "Hashing to Elliptic Curves", RFC 9380, DOI 10
.17487 , , <https:///RFC9380 www >..rfc -editor .org /info /rfc9380 - [RFC2119]
-
Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10
.17487 , , <https:///RFC2119 www >..rfc -editor .org /info /rfc2119 - [RFC8032]
-
Josefsson, S. and I. Liusvaara, "Edwards-Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA)", RFC 8032, DOI 10
.17487 , , <https:///RFC8032 www >..rfc -editor .org /info /rfc8032 - [RFC8174]
-
Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10
.17487 , , <https:///RFC8174 www >..rfc -editor .org /info /rfc8174 - [RISTRETTO]
-
de Valence, H., Grigg, J., Hamburg, M., Lovecruft, I., Tankersley, G., and F. Valsorda, "The ristretto255 and decaf448 Groups", RFC 9496, DOI 10
.17487 , , <https:///RFC9496 www >..rfc -editor .org /info /rfc9496 - [SEC1]
-
Standards for Efficient Cryptography, "SEC 1: Elliptic Curve Cryptography", Version 2.0, , <https://
secg >..org /sec1 -v2 .pdf - [SEC2]
-
Standards for Efficient Cryptography, "SEC 2: Recommended Elliptic Curve Domain Parameters", Version 2.0, , <https://
secg >..org /sec2 -v2 .pdf - [x9.62]
- American National Standards Institute, "Public Key Cryptography for the Financial Services Industry: the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA)", ANSI X9.62-2005, .
9.2. Informative References
- [Feldman
Secret Sharing] -
Feldman, P., "A practical scheme for non-interactive verifiable secret sharing", IEEE, 28th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (sfcs 1987), DOI 10
.1109 , , <https:///sfcs .1987 .4 doi >..org /10 .1109 /sfcs .1987 .4 - [FROST20]
-
Komlo, C. and I. Goldberg, "FROST: Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold Signatures", , <https://
eprint >..iacr .org /2020 /852 .pdf - [MultExp]
-
Connolly, D. and C. Gouvea, "Speeding up FROST with multi-scalar multiplication", , <https://
zfnd >..org /speeding -up -frost -with -multi -scalar -multiplication / - [Pornin22]
-
Pornin, T., "Point-Halving and Subgroup Membership in Twisted Edwards Curves", , <https://
eprint >..iacr .org /2022 /1164 .pdf - [RFC4086]
-
Eastlake 3rd, D., Schiller, J., and S. Crocker, "Randomness Requirements for Security", BCP 106, RFC 4086, DOI 10
.17487 , , <https:///RFC4086 www >..rfc -editor .org /info /rfc4086 - [RFC7748]
-
Langley, A., Hamburg, M., and S. Turner, "Elliptic Curves for Security", RFC 7748, DOI 10
.17487 , , <https:///RFC7748 www >..rfc -editor .org /info /rfc7748 - [ROAST]
-
Ruffing, T., Ronge, V., Jin, E., Schneider
-Bensch, J. , and D. Schröder, "ROAST: Robust Asynchronous Schnorr Threshold Signatures", Paper 2022/550, DOI 10.1145/3548606, , <https://eprint >..iacr .org /2022 /550 - [Shamir
Secret Sharing] -
Shamir, A., "How to share a secret", Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Communications of the ACM, Vol. 22, Issue 11, pp. 612-613, DOI 10
.1145 , , <https:///359168 .359176 doi >..org /10 .1145 /359168 .359176 - [StrongerSec22]
-
Bellare, M., Crites, E., Komlo, C., Maller, M., Tessaro, S., and C. Zhu, "Better than Advertised Security for Non-interactive Threshold Signatures", DOI 10
.1007 , , <https:///978 -3 -031 -15985 -5 _18 crypto >..iacr .org /2022 /papers /538806 _1 _En _18 _Chapter _Online PDF .pdf - [TLS]
-
Rescorla, E., "The Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.3", RFC 8446, DOI 10
.17487 , , <https:///RFC8446 www >..rfc -editor .org /info /rfc8446
Appendix A. Schnorr Signature Encoding
This section describes one possible canonical encoding of FROST signatures. Using notation from Section 3 of [TLS], the encoding of a FROST signature (R, z) is as follows:¶
Where SignatureG, SignatureG, and G is determined by ciphersuite.¶
Appendix B. Schnorr Signature Generation and Verification for Prime-Order Groups
This section contains descriptions of functions for generating and verifying Schnorr signatures.
It is included to complement the routines present in [RFC8032] for prime-order groups, including
ristretto255, P-256, and secp256k1. The functions for generating and verifying signatures are
prime_order_sign and prime, respectively.¶
The function prime_order_sign produces a Schnorr signature over a message given a full secret signing
key as input (as opposed to a key share).¶
The function prime verifies Schnorr signatures with validated inputs.
Specifically, it assumes that the signature R component and public key belong to the prime-order group.¶
Appendix C. Trusted Dealer Key Generation
One possible key generation mechanism is to depend on a trusted dealer, wherein the
dealer generates a group secret s uniformly at random and uses Shamir and Verifiable
Secret Sharing [Shamirs_i for i = 1, ..., MAX, to be sent to all MAX_PARTICIPANTS participants.
This operation is specified in the trusted algorithm. The mathematical relation
between the secret key s and the MAX_PARTICIPANTS secret shares is formalized in the secret
algorithm, defined in Appendix C.1.¶
The dealer that performs trusted is trusted to 1) generate good randomness, 2) delete secret values after distributing shares to each participant, and 3) keep secret values confidential.¶
It is assumed that the dealer then sends one secret key share to each of the NUM_PARTICIPANTS participants, along with vss_commitment.
After receiving their secret key share and vss_commitment, participants MUST abort if they do not have the same view of vss_commitment.
The dealer can use a secure broadcast channel to ensure each participant has a consistent view of this commitment.
Furthermore, each participant MUST perform vss and abort if the check fails.
The trusted dealer MUST delete the secret_key and secret
Use of this method for key generation requires a mutually authenticated secure channel between the dealer and participants to send secret key shares, wherein the channel provides confidentiality and integrity. Mutually authenticated TLS is one possible deployment option.¶
C.1. Shamir Secret Sharing
In Shamir secret sharing, a dealer distributes a secret Scalar s to n participants
in such a way that any cooperating subset of at least MIN_PARTICIPANTS participants can recover the
secret. There are two basic steps in this scheme: 1) splitting a secret into
multiple shares and 2) combining shares to reveal the resulting secret.¶
This secret sharing scheme works over any field F. In this specification, F is
the Scalar field of the prime-order group G.¶
The procedure for splitting a secret into shares is as follows.
The algorithm polynomial is defined in Appendix C.1.1.¶
Let points be the output of this function. The i-th element in points is
the share for the i-th participant, which is the randomly generated polynomial
evaluated at coordinate i. We denote a secret share as the tuple (i, points[i])
and the list of these shares as shares. i MUST never equal 0; recall that
f(0) = s, where f is the polynomial defined in a Shamir secret sharing operation.¶
The procedure for combining a shares list of length MIN_PARTICIPANTS to recover the
secret s is as follows; the algorithm polynomial is defined in Appendix C.1.1.¶
C.1.1. Additional Polynomial Operations
This section describes two functions. One function, denoted as polynomial,
is for evaluating a polynomial f(x) at a particular point x using Horner's method,
i.e., computing y = f(x). The other function, polynomial, is for
recovering the constant term of an interpolating polynomial defined by a set of points.¶
The function polynomial is defined as follows.¶
The function polynomial is defined as follows.¶
C.2. Verifiable Secret Sharing
Feldman's Verifiable Secret Sharing (VSS) [Feldmanf for which the secret s
is the constant term. This check ensures that all participants have a point
(their share) on the same polynomial, ensuring that they can reconstruct
the correct secret later.¶
The procedure for committing to a polynomial f of degree at most MIN is as follows.¶
The procedure for verification of a participant's share is as follows.
If vss_verify fails, the participant MUST abort the protocol, and the failure should be investigated out of band.¶
We now define how the Coordinator and participants can derive group info, which is an input into the FROST signing protocol.¶
Appendix D. Random Scalar Generation
Two popular algorithms for generating a random integer uniformly distributed in the range [0, G.Order() -1] are described in the sections that follow.¶
D.1. Rejection Sampling
Generate a random byte array with Ns bytes and attempt to map to a Scalar
by calling Deserialize in constant time. If it succeeds, return the
result. If it fails, try again with another random byte array, until the
procedure succeeds. Failure to implement Deserialize in constant time
can leak information about the underlying corresponding Scalar.¶
As an optimization, if the group order is very close to a power of
2, it is acceptable to omit the rejection test completely. In particular, if the group order is p and there is an integer b such that |p - 2b| is less than 2(b/2), then
RandomScalar can simply return a uniformly random integer of at
most b bits.¶
D.2. Wide Reduction
Generate a random byte array with l = ceil(((3 * ceil
bytes and interpret it as an integer; reduce the integer modulo G.Order() and return the
result. See Section 5 of [HASH-TO-CURVE] for the underlying derivation of l.¶
Appendix E. Test Vectors
This section contains test vectors for all ciphersuites listed in Section 6.
All Element and Scalar values are represented in serialized form and encoded in
hexadecimal strings. Signatures are represented as the concatenation of their
constituent parts. The input message to be signed is also encoded as a hexadecimal
string.¶
Each test vector consists of the following information.¶
Acknowledgments
This document was improved based on input and contributions by the Zcash Foundation engineering team. In addition, the authors of this document would like to thank Isis Lovecruft, Alden Torres, T. Wilson-Brown, and Conrado Gouvea for their input and contributions.¶