Royal Holloway: Secure multiparty computation and its application to digital asset custody
Secure multiparty computation (MPC) is a branch of cryptography that can be used by two or more parties to jointly compute the output of an arbitrary function, without sacrificing the privacy of their respective inputs. MPC has existed since the early 1980s, but interest in the field has increased in recent years, particularly due to its potential to facilitate the secure custody of digital assets such as bitcoin. With the continued adoption of both MPC and digital assets, it is now necessary for security practitioners to be familiar with at least the fundamental concepts underpinning both technologies. As such, this article provides a brief overview of MPC, and further highlights the benefits of MPC-based bitcoin custody over traditional approaches.