Tight Short-Lived Signatures

Abstract: A Time-lock puzzle (TLP) sends information into the future: a predetermined number of sequential computations must occur (i.e., a predetermined amount of time must pass) to retrieve the information, regardless of parallelization. Buoyed by the excitement around secure decentralized applications and cryptocurrencies, the last decade has witnessed numerous constructions of TLP variants and related applications (e.g., cost-efficient blockchain designs, randomness beacons, e-voting, etc.). In this poster, we first extend the notion of TLP by formally defining the "time-lock public key encryption" (TLPKE) scheme. Next, we introduce and construct a "tight short-lived signatures" scheme using our TLPKE. Furthermore, to test the validity of our proposed schemes, we do a proof-of-concept implementation and run detailed simulations.