Paper 2026/723

Hint-Free Multi-Signatures

Michael Reichle, ETH Zurich

Benedikt Wagner, Ethereum Foundation

Abstract

In a (non-interactive) multi-signature scheme, parties independently generate keys and produce signatures on a common message, which can be aggregated into a single signature verifiable with respect to the set of public keys. Existing multi-signature constructions, however, suffer from at least one of two limitations: either (1) aggregate signatures cannot be further aggregated, or (2) verification requires auxiliary information beyond the set of public keys, such as the aggregation topology. We argue that these limitations significantly restrict the applicability of multi-signatures in large-scale distributed systems, such as proof-of-stake blockchains. To address this gap, we initiate the formal study of hint-free multi-signatures, which support multi-hop aggregation while allowing verification using only the set of public keys. To the best of our knowledge, the only previously known (folklore) construction that is fully hint-free relies on recursive SNARKs, which introduces unclear heuristics for security (e.g., proving statements about random oracle relations) or inherently limits the depth of the aggregation topology. We show that hint-free multi-signatures can be realized without proof recursion, in the standard model. At a high level, we show how to publicly normalize BLS multi-signatures so that verification depends only on the set of public keys rather than a multi-set. While our scheme is not practical (it uses indistinguishability obfuscation), it establishes the feasibility of the primitive provides a foundation for future work on practical constructions.

@misc{cryptoeprint:2026/723,
      author = {Dennis Hofheinz and Michael Reichle and Benedikt Wagner},
      title = {Hint-Free Multi-Signatures},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2026/723},
      year = {2026},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2026/723}
}