Frontier research
for digital asset security

Dfns Labs is a team of cryptographers and security engineers driving research and innovation for digital asset security. We collaborate with academia and we open source most of our work.

Eliminating single points of failure

Multi-party computation and threshold cryptography are at the heart of our security model. Dfns Labs is dedicated to researching primitives and expanding MPC capabilities to enhance digital asset security.

Eliminating single points of failure

Multi-party computation and threshold cryptography are at the heart of our security model. Dfns Labs is dedicated to researching primitives and expanding MPC capabilities to enhance digital asset security.

Decentralization
Stability
Flexibility
Neutrality
Over 60,000 academic citations

The leading research team for applied MPC protocols

Enable developers and users to own digital assets with confidence. We develop security layers, providing error margins and protection against mistakes that would otherwise be irreparable.

Denis Varlakov

Denis Varlakov

Lead MPC Engineer
Nikita Sorokovikov

Nikita Sorokovikov

MPC Engineer
Antoine Urban

Antoine Urban

Cryptographer
Jonathan Katz

Jonathan Katz

Scientific Advisor
Nigel Smart

Nigel Smart

Scientific Advisor
Thibault de Lachèze-Murel

Thibault de Lachèze-Murel

Head of Security
50 years old cryptography and still advancing

Home to the latest innovations in key management and wallet security

MPC Performance

Most MPC protocols are slow because they involve many steps. Latency, scalability, and availability have never been a focus. However, as more apps start requesting both high security and performance, we face a new challenge.  Our goal is to enhance MPC protocols to support high-volume, high-speed use without ever breaking.

Key Decentralization

Decentralizing key management is essential for neutral governance and secure digital assets. However, organizations may vary in their approach due to operational and regulatory factors. To meet these needs while ensuring security, we need MPC protocols that are flexible, crypto-agile, and easy to deploy in secure environments.

Trust Minimization

Blockchains try to solve trust issues but often fail because they rely on single points of failure and trusted components like coordinators and authentication systems. We address these key and signature related vulnerabilities by exploring verifiability via remote attestations, tamper-proof logs, and secure hardware among other techniques.

MPC-HSM Compatibility

Running MPC protocols in FIPS 140-2 and 140-3 certified HSM is challenging, especially in resource-limited settings like satellites. Coordination and synchronization issues in MPC add to the complexity. Our goal is to ensure MPC can run safely and efficiently in any secure environment, including HSMs, CloudHSMs, TEEs, and U2F devices.

MPC Standardization

MPC protocols can be hard to differentiate and trust as there are so many of them. We are contributing to NIST to create new standards.  We've also donated our open-source libraries to Hyperledger and Linux Foundations for trust and legal clearance. Last, we're developing FIPS-140 certified MPC libraries, audited by external labs.

Post-Quantum TSS

Dfns Labs is developing quantum-resistant threshold signatures to protect elliptic curve signature schemes from foreseeable quantum computing threats. We aim to lead in the emerging Post-Quantum TSS field. Our new protocol is supported by NIST and funded by a €2M research grant from Bpifrance.

This is how we make digital assets safer

Explore and contribute
to ongoing research projects

CGGMP21

Done
Public

Rust implementation of the latest MPC protocol designed by Gennaro, Goldfeder and Canetti.

GitHub-dfns/cggmp21:State-of-art threshold ECDSA in Rust
Kudelski Security
Reviewed by
Kudelski Security

STARK curve

Done
Public

STARK curve added to CGGMP21 protocol by solving its complex hashing requirements.

GitHub - dfns/stark-curve: Stark curve implementation in Rust
Reviewed by

Round-optimal fully secure DKG

Done
Public

New, faster DKG protocol that we'll first test in an honest-majority ECDSA setting.

Round Optimal Fully Secure Distributed Key Generation
Reviewed by

FROST with adaptive security

Done
Public

Adaptive security of a three-round threshold Schnorr signature scheme, called Sparkle.

Fully Adaptive Schnorr Threshold Signatures
Kudelski Security
Reviewed by
Kudelski Security

FROST with key-independent preprocessing

Done
Public

Better concrete security analysis for multi-key FROST.

Reviewed by

DKG in the discrete-logarithm setting

Done
Public

Independent DKG and TSS standardization for modularity; simulations for clear DKG security.

Distributed Key Generation in the Discrete-Logarithm Setting
NIST
Reviewed by
NIST

Threshold EdDSA submissions of FROST and (maybe) Sparkle

Done
Public

Introduction of two threshold signature submissions: FROST and Sparkle schemes.

Threshold EdDSA Submissions of FROST and (maybe) Sparkle
NIST
Reviewed by
NIST

Standard protocols for threshold ECDSA

Done
Public

Threshold cryptography deployment scenarios, namely for TSS in key management networks.

Standardizing Protocols for Threshold ECDSA
NIST
Reviewed by
NIST

KU23

Ongoing
Private

Honest-majority ECDSA protocol with key-independent presigning for faster performance.

Kudelski Security
Reviewed by
Kudelski Security

TSS accountability

Ongoing
Private

TSS verifiability using tracing keys that allow signers to account for their actions.

Threshold Signatures with Private Accountability
Reviewed by

TSS parameter determination

Ongoing
Private

Analysis of threshold signature parameters followed by concrete recommendations.

Reviewed by

AI-based wallet intrusion detection and prevention system (aka “WIDPS”)

Ongoing
Private

Intrusion detection and prevention system for wallets using artificial neural networks (ANN).

Reviewed by

SoK on DKG

Ongoing
Public

Systematization of knowledge (SoK) paper about security notions for DKG.

Reviewed by

SoK on TSS

Ongoing
Public

Systematization of knowledge” (SoK) paper about security notions for TSS.

Reviewed by

Hardened key derivations with MPC

Challenge
Private

Standard hardened key derivation in MPC adds complexity due to fine coordinated compute.

Reviewed by

Formal verification

Challenge
Private

Formal verification adds security and correctness to complex, errorprone threshold protocols.

Reviewed by

Key repair and refresh improvements

Challenge
Public

Repair and refresh for all TSS protocols, with one-round DKG and offline proactive refresh.

Reviewed by

Satellite-hosted DKG

Challenge
Private

Satellite-based signing using TSS has be done. Next step is to perform DKG from a satellite.

Satellite-based ‘Space Wallet’ reimagines transaction security
Reviewed by

FIPS 140-2 and -3 compatible MPC

Challenge
Private

FIPS certification of TSS and DKG with support for all the standard key derivation paths.

Reviewed by

Quantum resistant TSS

Challenge
Public

Quantum resistant threshold signatures with enhanced hashbased security methods.

Reviewed by

Decentralized recovery

Challenge
Public

Leverage blockchain to decentralize and secure key recovery without Dfns-hosted backups.

Reviewed by

Signature thresholdization

Challenge
Public

BLS, HMAC, SHA-256, BLAKE2 and other types of signature have not been thresholdized yet.

Reviewed by

Fully on-chain KMS

Challenge
Private

Dedicated blockchain for key management to achieve everlasting business continuity.

Reviewed by

The latest posts by Dfns Labs

Research

Lockness Is Alive

Introducing Lockness, a Dfns-led initiative that brings together state-of-the-art public key protocols, digital signatures and data storage technology for the first time under LF Decentralized Trust, formerly known as the Hyperledger Foundation.

Research

What’s So Hard About Hashing Data?

Hashing is a fundamental tool in cryptography. In this article, we'll explore an advanced application: hashing structured data, with practical examples in Rust.

Research

Fully Secure DKG

Our new DKG protocol, developed at Dfns Labs, has been accepted to CRYPTO 2024, the leading conference on cryptography.

Teaming up with top universities and institutions

Dfns Labs is always looking to build new partnerships

ENISA
ANSSI
MPC Alliance
NIST
Bpifrance
KU Leuven
The University of Maryland
Institut Polytechnique de Paris
Thales
Linux Foundation

Let's push the limits of web3 wallet security.
Together.