Cryptography competitions often contribute to the development and standardization of new cryptography. They help select primitives and algorithms that solve specific cryptographic problems securely and efficiently from a list of candidate submissions. Over the last decades, several competitions held by NIST and other research and regulatory organizations resulted in standards for, e.g., symmetric and asymmetric encryption, hashing, digital signatures, and, most recently, quantum secure cryptography. However, while these competitions fostered much technical research on the submitted schemes, little is currently known about the human aspects of cryptography competition processes, how they shape the competition results, and their perceived impact on cryptography security. To investigate human aspects of cryptography competitions, we interviewed 20 experienced cryptography competition participants on their experiences, their assessment of the competitions' impact and what it depended on, and suggestions to improve future competitions. We find that competitions bring attention to a cryptography area, providing research focus and motivation and establishing trust in schemes through community scrutiny and collaboration. Our participants highlighted the criticality of transparency, fairness, and trustworthiness of the competition organizer, emphasizing a need for clear and open communication. Based on these findings, we suggest strategies for future competitions to maximize engagement and provide transparent, trustworthy processes and results. We recommend stronger moderation of social conduct on official channels to ensure fairness and prevent putting off potential contributors. We also find substantial involvement and feedback collection from industry is critical. Transparent organization and evaluation elevate the competition and foster secure and well-adopted standards.
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS)
2025-10-13
2026-06-27