Four small divergences from the reference implementation and its API
contract, none of which changes any signature: the differential harness
(240 signing + 120 deterministic-signing cases against the Python
reference) produces byte-identical output before and after.
Length prefixes that do not fit
-------------------------------
secp256k1_frost_sha256_write_prefixed asserted, via VERIFY_CHECK, that
the length fits into its prefix. VERIFY_CHECK compiles away in release
builds, so a length that does not fit was silently truncated modulo
2^(8*prefix_size) instead of being rejected, yielding a nonce that does
not follow the spec. The reference raises OverflowError instead.
Only the 4-byte extra_in prefix of nonce_hash is affected, and only where
size_t is wider than 32 bits, so this needs an extra_in of 4 GiB to
trigger. It is nevertheless a silent deviation, so write_prefixed now
returns 0 without writing anything, and the failure is propagated:
secp256k1_frost_nonce_function and secp256k1_frost_det_nonce_function
return 0, and secp256k1_frost_nonce_gen returns 0 after wiping
session_secrand32 and the nonces. Checking the shifted-out bits (which
the loop already computes) rather than comparing extra_in_len against a
32-bit bound avoids a comparison that is always true on 32-bit platforms.
The bound is now documented on the extra_in_len parameter.
Identifiers equal to UINT32_MAX
-------------------------------
BIP 445 derive_interpolating_value accepts every identifier in
0 <= id < 2^32, but secp256k1_frost_ids_are_valid rejected UINT32_MAX
because the mapping to the polynomial x-coordinate, id + 1, overflows in
uint32_t arithmetic. The +1 is now added in scalar arithmetic, where it
cannot overflow, and the identifier restriction is gone. The denominator
never needed the +1 at all, since
x_j - x_i = (id_j + 1) - (my_id + 1) = id_j - my_id
so it is computed directly from the identifiers.
This was unreachable through the public API -- validate_session_params
already bounds identifiers by n_participants, which is at most
SECP256K1_FROST_MAX_PARTICIPANTS = 128 -- but it made an internal helper
diverge from the algorithm it implements. frost_large_id_test covers it
by reconstructing the constant term of a random degree-2 polynomial from
shares held by identifiers 0, UINT32_MAX - 1 and UINT32_MAX.
Zero-length messages
--------------------
secp256k1_frost_session_init and secp256k1_frost_deterministic_sign
required a non-NULL msg, so an empty message -- which the reference
represents as the byte string b"" -- could only be passed as a pointer
that is never dereferenced. Both now accept NULL when msglen is 0,
matching secp256k1_schnorrsig_sign_custom and the msg parameter of
secp256k1_frost_nonce_gen. secp256k1_sha256_write guards both of its
memcpy calls on a non-zero length, so it is never reached with a NULL
pointer.
NonceGen keeps its distinction between a NULL msg and a zero-length msg:
there the BIP really does distinguish msg = None (hashed as the single
byte 0x00) from msg = b"" (hashed as 0x01 followed by an eight-byte zero
length), and the API expresses that as NULL versus non-NULL.
frost_empty_msg_test runs a signing round over a zero-length message
passed both ways and checks that the two session objects are identical.
The two API tests that relied on a NULL msg always being rejected now
pass an explicit non-zero msglen; previously they passed a random msglen
that could be 0.
Header documentation
--------------------
The parameter tables of eleven doc comments had names that did not line
up with their block's continuation column. All parameter tables are now
aligned consistently, with wrapped text two columns past the colon.
Verification
------------
- gcc and clang, -std=c89 -pedantic-errors -Werror, with and without
-DVERIFY: clean
- tests (multiple seeds), noverify_tests and frost_example: pass
- ctime_tests under MemorySanitizer: exits 0 with halt_on_error=1
- vectors.h still reproduces exactly from the spec's JSON vectors
- 240 signing + 120 deterministic-signing differential cases against
the BIP 445 Python reference: byte-identical to the previous commit
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
1605b02f cd49c57e 453949ab 57315a69 97de5120 c5da3bde 99ab4a10 d071aa56 1d146ac3 322d0a43 c7a7f732 ac561601 dfe042fe 3019186a 95e68158 10f546a2 c0a2aba0 ' into temp-merge-1811
c8206b1c b6c2a3cd e7f7083b be5e4f02 5c751833 540fec8a aa2a39c1 8d445730 f9a944ff 2d9137ce 4721e077 471e3a13 ebb35882 1a53f496 c7a52400 ' into temp-merge-1809
c8206b1c b6c2a3cd e7f7083b be5e4f02 5c751833 540fec8a aa2a39c1 8d445730 f9a944ff 2d9137ce 4721e077 471e3a13 ebb35882 1a53f496 c7a52400 ' into temp-merge-1809
libsecp256k1-zkp
A fork of libsecp256k1 with support for advanced and experimental features
Added features:
- Experimental module for ECDSA adaptor signatures.
- Experimental module for ECDSA sign-to-contract.
- Experimental modules for Confidential Assets (Pedersen commitments, range proofs, and surjection proofs).
- Experimental module for address whitelisting.
- Experimental module for Schnorr signature half-aggregation.
- Experimental module for FROST (BIP 445).
Experimental features are made available for testing and review by the community. The APIs of these features should not be considered stable.
Build steps
Obtaining and verifying
The git tag for each release (e.g. v0.6.0) is GPG-signed by one of the maintainers.
For a fully verified build of this project, it is recommended to obtain this repository
via git, obtain the GPG keys of the signing maintainer(s), and then verify the release
tag's signature using git.
This can be done with the following steps:
- Obtain the GPG keys listed in SECURITY.md.
- If possible, cross-reference these key IDs with another source controlled by its owner (e.g. social media, personal website). This is to mitigate the unlikely case that incorrect content is being presented by this repository.
- Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/bitcoin-core/secp256k1 - Check out the latest release tag, e.g.
git checkout v0.7.1 - Use git to verify the GPG signature:
% git tag -v v0.7.1 | grep -C 3 'Good signature' gpg: Signature made Mon 26 Jan 2026 07:42:46 PM UTC gpg: using RSA key 2840EAABF4BC9F0FFD716AFAFBAFCC46DE2D3FE2 gpg: Good signature from "Pieter Wuille <pieter@wuille.net>" [unknown] gpg: aka "Pieter Wuille <pieter.wuille@gmail.com>" [full] gpg: aka "[jpeg image of size 5996]" [undefined] gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature! gpg: There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner. Primary key fingerprint: 133E AC17 9436 F14A 5CF1 B794 860F EB80 4E66 9320 Subkey fingerprint: 2840 EAAB F4BC 9F0F FD71 6AFA FBAF CC46 DE2D 3FE2
Building with Autotools
$ ./autogen.sh # Generate a ./configure script
$ ./configure # Generate a build system
$ make # Run the actual build process
$ make check # Run the test suite
$ sudo make install # Install the library into the system (optional)
To compile optional modules (such as Schnorr signatures), you need to run ./configure with additional flags (such as --enable-module-schnorrsig). Run ./configure --help to see the full list of available flags. For experimental modules, you will also need --enable-experimental as well as a flag for each individual module, e.g. --enable-module-rangeproof.
Building with CMake
To maintain a pristine source tree, CMake encourages to perform an out-of-source build by using a separate dedicated build tree.
Building on POSIX systems
$ cmake -B build # Generate a build system in subdirectory "build"
$ cmake --build build # Run the actual build process
$ ctest --test-dir build # Run the test suite
$ sudo cmake --install build # Install the library into the system (optional)
To compile optional modules (such as Schnorr signatures), you need to run cmake with additional flags (such as -DSECP256K1_ENABLE_MODULE_SCHNORRSIG=ON). Run cmake -B build -LH or ccmake -B build to see the full list of available flags.
Cross compiling
To alleviate issues with cross compiling, preconfigured toolchain files are available in the cmake directory.
For example, to cross compile for Windows:
$ cmake -B build -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=cmake/x86_64-w64-mingw32.toolchain.cmake
To cross compile for Android with NDK (using NDK's toolchain file, and assuming the ANDROID_NDK_ROOT environment variable has been set):
$ cmake -B build -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE="${ANDROID_NDK_ROOT}/build/cmake/android.toolchain.cmake" -DANDROID_ABI=arm64-v8a -DANDROID_PLATFORM=28
Building on Windows
The following example assumes Visual Studio 2022. Using clang-cl is recommended.
In "Developer Command Prompt for VS 2022":
>cmake -B build -T ClangCL
>cmake --build build --config RelWithDebInfo
Usage examples
Usage examples can be found in the examples directory. To compile them you need to configure with --enable-examples.
- ECDSA example
- Schnorr signatures example
- Deriving a shared secret (ECDH) example
- ElligatorSwift key exchange example
- MuSig2 Schnorr multi-signatures example
To compile the examples, make sure the corresponding modules are enabled.
Benchmark
If configured with --enable-benchmark (which is the default), binaries for benchmarking the libsecp256k1-zkp functions will be present in the root directory after the build.
To print the benchmark result to the command line:
$ ./bench_name
To create a CSV file for the benchmark result :
$ ./bench_name | sed '2d;s/ \{1,\}//g' > bench_name.csv
Reporting a vulnerability
See SECURITY.md
Contributing to libsecp256k1
See CONTRIBUTING.md