Good Things Come to Those Who Wait: Dishonest-Majority Coin-Flipping Requires Delay Functions

Joseph Bonneau, Benedikt Bünz, Miranda Christ, Yuval Efron

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

We reconsider Cleve’s famous 1986 impossibility result on coin-flipping without an honest majority. Recently proposed constructions have circumvented this limit by using cryptographic delay functions. We show that this is necessary: a (weak) notion of delay functions is in fact implied by the existence of a protocol circumventing Cleve’s impossibility. However, such delay functions are weaker than those used in existing constructions. We complete our result by showing an equivalence, that these weaker delay functions are also sufficient to construct not just fair dishonest-majority coin-flipping protocols, but also the stronger notion of a distributed randomness beacon. We also show that this is possible in a weaker communication model than previously considered, without the assumption of reliable broadcast or a public bulletin board.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationAdvances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2025 - 44th Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, Proceedings
EditorsSerge Fehr, Pierre-Alain Fouque
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages225-253
Number of pages29
ISBN (Print)9783031910975
DOIs
StatePublished - 2025
Event44th Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, EUROCRYPT 2025 - Madrid, Spain
Duration: May 4 2025May 8 2025

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science
Volume15607 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference44th Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, EUROCRYPT 2025
Country/TerritorySpain
CityMadrid
Period5/4/255/8/25

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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