HKU-SCF FinTech Talk Series – Do not put all eggs in one basket: securing your wallet with threshold cryptography

Speaker: Dr. Haiyang Xue
Date: 5 September, 2022
Time: 5-6pm Hong Kong Time
Via Zoom

Topic: Do not put all eggs in one basket: securing your wallet with threshold cryptography

Summary: Cryptocurrency and other blockchain-based digital assets rely on digital signatures to authorise transactions. An account owner could use his/her private signing key to sign a transaction and transfer the money. Thus, the theft of a private signing key immediately means financial loss.

In this talk, I will introduce a cryptographic tool, called threshold cryptography, to provide a high level of private key protection and reduce the risk of financial loss. Threshold cryptography follows the philosophy of “Do not put all your eggs in one basket”. It achieves security by sharing the private key in multiple devices and conducting the signing operation via a secure protocol that reveals nothing but the final signature. I will talk about its development, state-of-the-art, and applications in the area of FinTech.