Scientific knowledge map · Paper #73
Multi-Party Time-Lock Puzzles: Quorum-Controlled Delays Without a Single Point of Failure
2025 · 9th International Symposium on Cyber Security, Cryptology, and Machine Learning (CSCML)
- Theory
- protocol
- primitive
Research question
What does the paper try to establish?
Can a quorum jointly generate and control a time-lock puzzle so that no single participant can reveal its secret early or become a single point of failure?
Central answer
What is the proposed answer?
The curated editorial summary reports a multi-party time-lock-puzzle protocol with collective secret control and an application to multiparty computation whose output remains time locked.
Evidence profile
Six dimensions, kept separate
The chart summarizes documented evidence and process. It is not a correctness probability, confidence score, or ranking, and no composite score is calculated.
LowMediumHighN/A = not assessed
A smaller value means less documented support for that dimension, not that the paper is false or unimportant.
- Epistemic evidence Medium
-
The official abstract states a new primitive, practical protocol, quorum security goal, and TMPC application, and the official record fixes the publication identity. Full definitions, construction, assumptions, proofs, and any performance evidence were unavailable, so the rating does not exceed medium.
Motivation, MTP contribution, quorum property, and TMPC application Publisher / DOI - Auditability Medium
-
The resource record provides only official publication metadata and no archive or author-hosted copy; full-text assumptions, evidence, and version identity are not readily auditable from this map. Auditability is therefore medium.
Curated metadata and editorial summary Publisher / DOI - Production provenance Medium
-
The record documents named authorship and the publication or review status of the paper, establishing a baseline human and lifecycle provenance trail. Contributor roles, revision and effort history, AI or tool use, artifact-version lineage, and explicit final approval have not yet been audited, so this provisional medium rating should not be read as complete production provenance.
Curated metadata and editorial summary - External scrutiny Medium
-
The curated record reports publication and links official metadata, providing evidence of venue-level external exposure. Review policy, review reports, independent replication, criticism, correction history, and adversarial analysis were not audited.
Publisher / DOI - Reception Low
-
OpenAlex reported 0 citations for the published chapter on 2026-07-11. Under the author-defined corpus rule, 0 through 8 located citations is Low; this is an index-specific snapshot and does not merge citations to related ePrint 2023/439.
Dated citation-count snapshot - Contribution significance Medium
-
The editorial summary describes a concrete research contribution, supporting a provisional medium rating; novelty, comparative baselines, and downstream importance were not independently audited.
Curated metadata and editorial summary
Assessment: Ai draft author review pending · 2026-07-11 · rubric 0.2. These dimensions describe documented support and process, not truth, correctness, or a universal ranking. No composite score is calculated.
Top-down and bottom-up view
Hierarchical knowledge map
Collapse a branch for a top-level reading, or follow its source links and child nodes to audit the evidence and boundaries underneath it.
Multi-Party Time-Lock Puzzles: Quorum-Controlled Delays Without a Single Point of Failure
This paper introduces time-lock puzzles whose secret is generated and controlled collectively, preventing any one participant from revealing it early. It gives a practical protocol and uses it to construct timed multiparty computation with a time-locked output.
Motivation, MTP contribution, quorum property, and TMPC application-
question Research question
abstract grounded questionCan a quorum jointly generate and control a time-lock puzzle so that no single participant can reveal its secret early or become a single point of failure?
Motivation, MTP contribution, quorum property, and TMPC application -
contribution Proposed contribution
abstract reportedThe curated editorial summary reports a multi-party time-lock-puzzle protocol with collective secret control and an application to multiparty computation whose output remains time locked.
Motivation, MTP contribution, quorum property, and TMPC application -
method Method or construction
abstract reportedThe described construction distributes puzzle generation and control across multiple parties, then uses the resulting delayed-release mechanism within a timed MPC application.
Motivation, MTP contribution, quorum property, and TMPC application -
claim group Principal reported claims
abstract reportedThe summary reports quorum-controlled delayed release without unilateral early disclosure and a construction of timed MPC with a time-locked output.
Motivation, MTP contribution, quorum property, and TMPC application -
evidence group Reported evidence
abstract level evidence onlyA practical protocol and cryptographic application are reported, but algorithms, threat model, setup, proofs, timing assumptions, quorum thresholds, implementation, and measurements were not audited.
Motivation, MTP contribution, quorum property, and TMPC application -
limitation group Scope and limitations
editorial synthesis pending source auditThis draft has not checked collusion bounds, abort and availability behavior, sequentiality assumptions, clock or hardware assumptions, fairness, setup trust, recovery from failed parties, or concrete performance.
Curated metadata and editorial summary -
artifact group Artifacts and resources
editorial synthesis pending source auditThe resource data links 1 resource (1 official, 0 archive, 0 author-hosted). Their content, version identity, fixity, and correspondence to the summarized work were not audited.
Curated metadata and editorial summary Publisher / DOI -
scrutiny Scrutiny and status
editorial synthesis pending source auditThe curated record lists this work in 9th International Symposium on Cyber Security, Cryptology, and Machine Learning (CSCML). That publication status supplies venue-level scrutiny, but no review reports, independent reproductions, corrections, or adversarial analyses were audited.
Publisher / DOI -
threat model Malicious or compromised committer boundary
abstract reportedClassical time-lock puzzles let one committer know the secret and therefore assume that party will not selectively disclose it early. MTP distributes generation so premature recovery requires compromising a quorum rather than one party.
Motivation, MTP contribution, quorum property, and TMPC application -
primitive Multi-party time-lock puzzle
abstract reported definitionThe abstract characterizes MTP as a new primitive with distributed puzzle generation and a threshold-controlled early-reconstruction condition. The exact interface, threshold, setup, and security experiment require full-text audit.
Motivation, MTP contribution, quorum property, and TMPC application -
protocol Timed multi-party computation
abstract reported constructionThe paper reports using MTP to construct TMPC, modeled as multiparty computation with a single time-locked output. No stronger fairness, availability, or multiple-output claim is inferred from the abstract.
Motivation, MTP contribution, quorum property, and TMPC application -
lineage Relation to ePrint 2023/439
bibliographic relationship not version equivalenceThe older site listing linked ePrint 2023/439 by the same authors. That record develops standard-model definitions and composition under a different title; this map treats it as related foundations, not as a verified full-text version of the MTP chapter.
Related standard-model timed-cryptography work by the same authors
Audit trail
Source index
Locators state the depth of the current audit. PDF page numbers, where present, are one-based file pages; metadata-, summary-, and abstract-bounded records explicitly identify their limitations.
- Curated metadata and editorial summary Website publication record. The summary is editorial and has not been checked against full text.
- Publisher / DOI Official abstract and proceedings pages 68-85.
- Motivation, MTP contribution, quorum property, and TMPC application Publisher abstract
- Related standard-model timed-cryptography work by the same authors ePrint 2023/439 title, abstract, authorship, and metadata
- Dated citation-count snapshot OpenAlex reported 0 citing works when accessed 2026-07-11