SSV Network selects Randamu for Distributed Key Generation (DKG) Grant Award
The Californer/10262845

REDMOND, Wash. - Californer -- Overview

SSV Network is a fully decentralized and open Ethereum (ETH) staking infrastructure that uses Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) to split a validator key between non-trusting nodes or operators in a network. This allows for greater resilience for ETH staking applications and supports the decentralization of Ethereum's validation layer at scale.

Randamu is a software development company that specializes in threshold cryptography, including distributed key generation (DKG) solutions, and is composed of the core maintainers of the drand software and the League of Entropy network.

SSV Network recently awarded Randamu a grant to author and maintain 'DKG Coordinator' software. The purpose of this new software will be to assist SSV Network participants in managing their DKG processes and ensuring the integrity and availability of their validator secret keys.

Validator key management and security is currently a pain point for ETH staking as standard setups require the key to be online 24/7 for duties. By integrating a DKG coordinator into SSV Network, the existing security, performance, and flexibility of distributed validators (DVs) are boosted further.

Project Challenges

Before selecting Randamu as their preferred recipient for the DKG Coordinator development effort, SSV Network faced several challenges with their DKG protocol, such as:

• Lack of standardization: Different DKG protocols have different specifications, parameters, and assumptions, making it hard to ensure interoperability and compatibility between different implementations.
• Lack of reliability: DKG protocols are prone to failures due to network latency, malicious nodes, or faulty hardware, resulting in incomplete or inconsistent key shares or public keys.
• Lack of security: DKG protocols require a high level of trust and coordination among the participants, exposing them to risks of collusion, corruption, or compromise by adversaries.
• Lack of scalability: DKG protocols have high communication and computation overhead, limiting the number of participants and the frequency of key updates that can be supported.

Planned Results

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By adopting Randamu's DKG Coordinator as a solution to their DKG management challenges, SSV Network expects to achieve the following results:

• Standardization: Randamu's DKG Coordinator implements a robust, well-known and widely used DKG protocol based on Pedersen's verifiable secret sharing scheme.
• Reliability: Randamu's DKG Coordinator employs various techniques to enhance the resilience of the DKG protocol, such as error correction, threshold encryption, proactive refreshment, and distributed storage - it's been running with 100% uptime on other networks since 2019.
• Security: Randamu's DKG Coordinator leverages cryptographic primitives and protocols to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the key shares and public keys, such as digital signatures, verifiable random functions, and Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT).
• Resilience: Randamu's DKG Coordinator streamlines the communication and computation complexity of the DKG protocol, enabling support for large numbers of participants and frequent key updates.

Collaboration Benefits

As a result of their experience with Randamu and the DKG Coordinator software, SSV Network expects to accrue the following benefits:

• Improved performance: SSV Network can run faster and more efficiently with Randamu's DKG Coordinator, reducing the latency and bandwidth consumption of their DKG process, along with diminishing effort required to coordinate a cluster.
• Enhanced security: SSV Network can operate more securely with Randamu's DKG Coordinator, mitigating the risks of key leakage, manipulation, or loss.
• Increased flexibility: SSV Network can adapt more easily with Randamu's DKG Coordinator, allowing them to adjust their parameters and preferences according to their needs and goals.
• Reduced costs: SSV Network will require fewer resources with Randamu's DKG Coordinator, thus lowering their operational and maintenance expenses.

Summary

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SSV Network is a decentralized ETH staking network that will rely on Randamu's DKG Coordinator to manage their DKG process and ensure the integrity and availability of their validator keys. Randamu's DKG Coordinator offers a solution for SSV Network to enhance its DKG management, addressing issues such as standardization, reliability, security, and scalability. SSV's collaboration with Randamu will further assure its position as a premier provider of distributed validator technology, securing billions in custody within the network.