SIsimonpure·Apr 3, 2021Submission
Cothority – Scalable Collective Authority
2 points · Open discussiondedis
cothority
Go2016–2021
dedis / cothority
cothority
Scalable collective authority
6Distinct people
7Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
430GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Scalable collective authority
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
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Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:03:16 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year7 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2016-01-01 05:22:17 UTC to 2021-04-03 16:23:26 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
7 sourcesHomomorphic encryption would allow tallying the ballots without decrypting them.
Helios [1], for instance uses an homomorphic scheme.
There are alternatives to it though which preserve voter privacy but allow vote tallying. Shuffling is one of them. Cothority [2] implements an e-voting scheme based on Neff Shuffles
1. https://heliosvoting.org/
2. https://github.com/dedis/cothority/tree/master/evoting
P.S. I contributed to the latter
In Homomorphic encryptionThis approach is probably an overkill, but this project called Cothority[0] can be used to verify binaries by semi-independent authorities to be released. One of the applications referenced in their dotSecurity talk[1] was this usecase.
[0] https://github.com/dedis/cothority
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YostyJRwqVU
In Giteabot account was compromisedThey did use our permissioned skipchain available on: https://github.com/dedis/cothority and ran some nodes on a server.
Instead of burning 200kWh for one transaction, a voting consensus system is enough.
BTW, there is also an e voting system in that repo, using neff shuffles.
In Sierra Leone just ran the first blockchain-based electionThis is one I personally have grown fond of: https://github.com/DeDiS/cothority
I've heard of blockchain based ideas as well but I'll leave that to your google-fu
In Let's Encrypt ACMEv2 and Wildcard Launch DelayWe were working on a more decentralized solution here: https://github.com/dedis/cothority/tree/master/cisc - unfortunately the update is still 1 month away...
This system uses a set of untrusted nodes that form a permissioned blockchain. Updating the chain requires a threshold of keys stored in the first block. The private keys are distributed over laptops/phones.
A person can have multiple devices that accept/deny new keys, while the servers check periodically for updates and can verify the new ssh-keys are legit by verifying the signatures.
I did a small demo at HotPETs 2016:
https://www.securityweek2016.tu-darmstadt.de/fileadmin/user_...
I also hope to have it running again, soon. If anybody is interested, don't hesitate to contact us at linus.gasser@epfl.ch
In Ask HN: How do you manage SSH keys and SSL certificates in your company?Cothority: Scalable collective authority prototype
11 points · Open discussion