secure messaging developers

Abstract: We propose Compact Shielded CSV, a private client-side validation blockchain for peer-to-peer payments designed for the postquantum era. Upgrading existing blockchains to quantum-resistant cryptography substantially increases on-chain overhead. By keeping all large cryptographic artifacts off-chain, Compact Shielded CSV keeps a minimal on-chain footprint independent of the size of the underlying cryptographic proofs and signatures. For a single input transaction, the onchain footprint is just 3 hashes (3x32 bytes): a nullifier, a degriefer, and a commitment to the transaction. We introduce the degriefer - a novel mechanism that enforces ownership and prevents double-spending using only hash commitments, eliminating the need for on-chain signatures entirely. These properties make Compact Shielded CSV a promising foundation for private, scalable, post-quantum digital payments.

Abstract: Fully encrypted protocols (FEPs) provide encrypted channels that make all protocol-generated bytes computationally indistinguishable from uniform random strings. Several previous works have explored security definitions and constructions of unidirectional FEPs: protocols in which one party acts only as a sender, and the other acts only as a receiver. However, most applications require two-way information exchange, and a network adversary can observe communication in both directions and their shared lifetime. Because the semantics of bidirectional channels involve more complex shared state, it is possible that the ``naïve'' composition of two unidirectional channels can result in a two-way protocol that can be detected based on dependencies between the two directions, such as traffic imbalance, channel closure, failures, or connection tear-down. To address this issue, we introduce new formal security definitions for bidirectional FEPs that capture exact shaping, delivery, protocol-state integrity, private half-close, and cross-direction isolation, while revealing a public ``sending schedule'' and ``closing epoch'' that may be randomized. We show that the trivial composition fails to meet these definitions, leading to practical detection attacks. We then construct provably secure bidirectional FEPs (BiFEPs) for both the datastream and datagram settings. For datastream, we combine two direction-separated FEPs with a ``wrapper'' layer that prevents detection based on the mismatch between uni- and bi-directional connection states. For datagram, we add encrypted DATA/FIN/ACK with replay protection and loss-tolerant close. We validate the design through a Rust implementation and show that none of the surveyed deployed protocols provides the full set of BiFEP security properties.