In response to a September 2022 announcement calling for additional Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) Digital Signature Schemes, NIST received 40 candidates that met all submission requirements.
See the PQC: Digital Signature Schemes project for the list of algorithms and their submission details.
This round of evaluation and analysis will likely last several years. NIST invites feedback on all 40 candidates. NIST anticipates holding the Fifth PQC standardization conference in April 2024.
NIST greatly appreciates all of the candidate submission teams for their continued efforts in the standardization process.
Background
In December 2016, NIST issued a public call for submissions to the PQC Standardization Process to select quantum-resistant public-key cryptographic algorithms for standardization in response to the substantial development and advancement of quantum computing. After three rounds of evaluation and analysis, NIST announced the selection of the first algorithms to be standardized, including three digital signature schemes: CRYSTALS-Dilithium, FALCON, and SPHINCS+.
In September 2022, NIST issued a fourth call for additional digital signature proposals to be considered in the PQC Standardization Process. The evaluation criteria and complete instructions for submission were posted on the PQC: Digital Signature Schemes project page, and the deadline for submission was June 1, 2023. NIST received 50 submissions in response and deemed 40 to be complete and proper according to the submission requirements. The complete submission packages, including the algorithm specifications and code for implementation, are posted on the PQC: Digital Signature Schemes project page.
NIST was primarily interested in additional general-purpose signature schemes that were not based on structured lattices. However, NIST was open to receiving additional submissions based on structured lattices that significantly outperformed CRYSTALS-Dilithium and FALCON in relevant applications and ensured substantial security properties.
