NIST First Call for Multi-Party Threshold Schemes: NIST IR 8214C

NIST has published Internal Report (IR) 8214C, NIST First Call for Multi-Party Threshold Schemes, which calls for public submissions of multi-party threshold schemes and related crypto-systems. These systems enable the distribution of trust regarding the creation, storage, and use of private/secret keys needed by cryptographic primitives.

The scope of this NIST Threshold Call includes NIST-approved primitives (e.g., signatures, encryption, symmetric-key and hashing-related primitives, key generation), and others, such as fully-homomorphic encryption (FHE) and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP).

The Threshold Call asks for submission packages with a technical specification, an open-source reference implementation, a report on experimental evaluation, and notes on patent claims. Additionally, this NIST Threshold Call:

• Organizes the scope into two classes (N and S), each with multiple categories
• Discusses the vision of collecting a body of reference materials on advanced cryptography
•  Organizes the process into three phases: Previews, Packages, and Analysis
• Outlines the required structure of a submission package
• Establishes security requirements and other requirements specific to each category

There will be three opportunities to present “previews” (plans of upcoming package submissions). The first opportunity will be hosted at MPTS 2026, the NIST Workshop on Multi-Party Threshold Schemes.

Additional information can be found at https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/threshold-cryptography