A new 3-year R&D project SCANDIUM, which runs at PACY Lab and is funded by ZITiS (Central Office for Information Technology in the Security Sector) kicked-off last month. The project explores methods to improve cooperation between German law-enforcement agencies that face complex and resource-intensive investigative tasks. Although these agencies are willing to collaborate, strict regulations prevent them from sharing sensitive information directly. As a result, coordination must be achieved in a way that respects confidentiality while still enabling efficient use of limited resources. In this project PACY Lab works with ZITiS on the design of secure multi-party computation protocols aiming to reduce redundant work across the agencies by detecting overlaps in large confidential datasets without revealing their contents. By ensuring that efforts are not duplicated, the approach aims to optimize the allocation of resources and shorten the overall time required to complete such investigative processes.
Prof. Mark Manulis recently attended the 20th ACM ASIACCS 2025 conference, held from 25 to 29 August 2025 in Hanoi, Vietnam. At this premier security event, he presented a research paper entitled “Fast SNARK‑based Non‑Interactive Distributed Verifiable Random Function with Ethereum Compatibility”, co‑authored with Jia Liu—then at Enya Labs, now with Input Output (IOHK). ACM ASIACCS, organized by ACM SIGSAC, is a leading forum for cutting-edge breakthroughs in computer and communications security. Their paper tackles a fundamental challenge in decentralized systems—secure, efficient randomness generation—by introducing the most efficient direct construction of a non‑interactive distributed verifiable random function (NI‑DVRF) that integrates seamlessly with Ethereum. This scheme innovatively combines pairing‑based cryptography, secret sharing, SNARKs, and BLS signatures, and is anchored in formal security proofs under standard assumptions in the random oracle model. Demonstrating both theoretical depth and practical viability, the team implemented highly optimized versions in Rust and Solidity, with deployment under consideration on Boba Network’s layer‑2 DRB service. Their experimental evaluation underscores strong performance and scalability, reinforcing the solution’s potential for real‑world blockchain adoption.
Cooperation with ZITiS on the new project SCANDIUM
