From Gothenburg to Dagstuhl: Digital Signatures and Post-Quantum Anonymous Credentials

28 September 2026

From September 4 to 11, 2026, two consecutive research visits took Daniel Slamanig first to Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg and then to the Dagstuhl Seminar on “Real-World Cryptography.”

On September 4, Daniel served as the opponent for Hanna Ek’s successful licentiate thesis defence. Her thesis, “Advanced Properties of Digital Signature Schemes", studies advanced properties of digital signatures, with a particular focus on multi-key homomorphic signatures and threshold signatures. Congratulations to Hanna on this important milestone!

Directly afterwards, Daniel participated in Dagstuhl Seminar 26371, “Real-World Cryptography”from September 6 to 11. International researchers discussed current challenges in real-world cryptography, including secure messaging, distributed systems, post-quantum techniques, and the analysis of deployed cryptographic protocols.

Daniel gave a talk entitled “Challenges in the Design of Post-Quantum Anonymous Credentials.” Anonymous credentials allow users to prove attributes without disclosing unnecessary personal information and are attracting increasing interest from industry and governments. Although such systems are well understood in the classical setting, existing constructions generally do not translate easily to a post-quantum setting. The talk surveyed the state of the art, outlined the main obstacles to constructions based on plausible post-quantum assumptions, and presented several open research problems.

Pictures: AdobeStock_431241839 & Schloss Dagstuhl LZI GmbH (creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND)