YACL Talk | Feb 27, 11:00am | Paul Gerhart, TU Wien - Theory and Applications of Adaptor Signatures

[Aviv Yaish]

Do join our next talk!

• Paul Gerhart, TU Wien - Theory and Applications of Adaptor Signatures (livestream)
• Time: February 27, 2026, 11am ET
• Abstract: Adaptor signatures have become a widely used cryptographic tool in decentralized systems, with applications ranging from payment channels and coin mixing to oracle-based and fair exchange protocols. At a high level, they extend digital signatures by enabling publicly verifiable pre-signatures that hide a valid signature and bind its completion to the revelation of a witness. The goal of this talk is to equip the audience with the intuition needed to use adaptor signatures correctly in real-world decentralized systems. We discuss which security properties are crucial when adaptor signatures are used as components of larger protocols, highlight common pitfalls, and demonstrate how seemingly reasonable constructions or definitions can lead to subtle vulnerabilities. Finally, we give an overview of threshold adaptor signatures and explain how they extend adaptor-based protocols to multi-party and decentralized governance settings.
• Links: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/1809.pdf, https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/388.pdf, https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1363.pdf
• Bio: Paul is a final-year PhD student in cryptography at TU Wien, working under the supervision of Dominique Schröder. His research focuses on the design and analysis of advanced cryptographic protocols. In particular, advanced signatures, partially-oblivious pseudorandom functions (PoPRFs), and password-based cryptography.
• More details: https://sites.google.com/view/yacl/seminar