What NIST IR 8528 Status Report on the First Round of the Additional Digital Signature Schemes for the PQC Standardization Process requires
NIST Internal Report 8528, Status Report on the First Round of the Additional Digital Signature Schemes for the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Process, was published in October 2024 and is available at doi.org/10.6028/NIST.IR.8528. It reports the outcome of a standardisation track that is separate from the original PQC process and separate from the fourth round: the additional signatures on-ramp opened in July 2022 to diversify the post-quantum signature portfolio. The reason for the on-ramp is stated directly. After three rounds of evaluation NIST selected CRYSTALS-Kyber (ML-KEM) as the key-encapsulation mechanism and CRYSTALS-Dilithium (ML-DSA), Falcon (FN-DSA) and SPHINCS+ (SLH-DSA) as the digital signatures, and except for SPHINCS+ all of these schemes are based on the computational hardness of problems that involve structured lattices. Because two lattice-based signature schemes had already been standardised, NIST expressed particular interest in additional general-purpose signature schemes based on a security assumption that did not use structured lattices, as well as schemes with short signatures and fast verification. The Call for Proposals accordingly required that lattice-based submissions provide at least one large performance advantage over both CRYSTALS-Dilithium and Falcon, and that non-lattice-based algorithms provide at least one large performance advantage over SPHINCS+. NIST received 50 submission packages by the entry deadline of June 1, 2023 and accepted 40 first-round candidates that met the submission requirements and the minimum acceptability criteria for complete and proper submissions, being reference and optimized C code implementations, known-answer tests, a written specification and required intellectual property statements; security, cost and implementation characteristics were expressly not considered at the acceptance stage. Based on public feedback and internal review, NIST selected 14 second-round candidates in October 2024: CROSS, FAEST, HAWK, LESS, MAYO, Mirath (the merger of MIRA and MiRitH), MQOM, PERK, QR-UOV, RYDE, SDitH, SNOVA, SQIsign and UOV. Selection weighted, in relative order of importance, security, then cost and performance, then algorithm and implementation characteristics. Any eventually selected scheme would augment FIPS 204, FIPS 205, FIPS 186-5 and SP 800-208 rather than replace them. The report records that changes to second-round submissions had to reach NIST by January 17, 2025, that a further standardisation conference was planned for September 2025, and that NIST planned to select finalists for a third round in 2026.
Pillar: Aviation, Defense & Quantum · Authority: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Information Technology Laboratory · Version: 1.0.0 · Last updated:
Primary source: https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/ir/8528/final
SHA-256 integrity: 6d6a80036fedd36a30bcb48cd9f94b258cad4700be58ec2abec3f66ecf27dbcd
Primary Citations — 10 traced to source
+ 8 more citations (full bibliography, deterministic workflow, actionable schema and crosswalks) included in the vault unlock — $0.01 via Skyfire / L402 / Direct Base USDC.
Access
- Discovery (free): /api/v1/nodes/nist-ir-8528-additional-signature-schemes-status.json — 6-field metadata
- Vault (full node): /api/v1/vault/nodes/nist-ir-8528-additional-signature-schemes-status.json — full 13-key payload, $0.01 USDC (L402/Skyfire/Direct Base)
- Canonical URL: https://bidda.com/intelligence/nist-ir-8528-additional-signature-schemes-status
- Back to registry: Browse all 10,099 compliance nodes