Paper 2025/1363

Universally Composable Adaptor Signatures

Abstract

Adaptor signatures extend the functionality of digital signatures by enabling the computation of pre-signatures on messages relative to statements in NP relations. Pre-signatures are publicly verifiable objects that simultaneously hide and commit to a standard signature on the same message. Anyone possessing a valid witness for the statement can adapt the pre-signature into a full signature under the underlying signature scheme. Since adaptor signatures are commonly used as building blocks in larger systems, in particular blockchain protocols, it is natural to seek a security definition in the Universal Composability (UC) framework. Tairi et al. (CCS'23) recently took a first step in this direction by proposing a UC functionality for adaptor signatures. This paper investigates UC-secure adaptor signatures as a primitive, making both negative and positive contributions. On the negative side, we show that the functionality proposed by Tairi et al. suffers from critical limitations: - The functionality fails to guarantee extractability and adaptability, which are core security properties of adaptor signatures, to higher-level protocols. - No adaptor signature scheme can realize the functionality. On the positive side, we propose a new UC functionality that faithfully captures the latest security guarantees of adaptor signatures as formalized via game-based notions by Gerhart et al. (EUROCRYPT'24). - Our functionality guarantees extractability and pre-signature adaptability in a way that is composable and meaningful for higher-level protocols. - We show that it is realizable by an enhanced Schnorr-based adaptor signature scheme that we construct. Our construction maintains compatibility with existing infrastructure and is efficient enough for practical deployment, particularly in Bitcoin-like environments.