Standardization of Additional Digital Signature Schemes
The Round 2 candidates were announced October 24, 2024. NIST IR 8528, Status Report on the First Round of the Additional Digital Signature Schemes for the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Process is now available.
NIST announced that the PQC standardization process is continuing with a fourth round, with the following KEMs still under consideration: BIKE, Classic McEliece, HQC, and SIKE. However, there are no remaining digital signature candidates under consideration. As such, NIST is calling for additional digital signature proposals to be considered in the PQC standardization process.
NIST is primarily interested in additional general-purpose signature schemes that are not based on structured lattices. For certain applications, such as certificate transparency, NIST may also be interested in signature schemes that have short signatures and fast verification. NIST is open to receiving additional submissions based on structured lattices, but is intent on diversifying the post-quantum signature standards. As such, any structured lattice-based signature proposal would need to significantly outperform CRYSTALS-Dilithium and FALCON in relevant applications and/or ensure substantial additional security properties to be considered for standardization.
