{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/delegated-time-lock-puzzle","title":"Scalable Time-Lock Puzzle","arxiv_id":"2308.01280","date":"2023-08-02","proceeding":null,"authors":["Aydin Abadi","Dan Ristea","Artem Grigor","Steven J. Murdoch"],"abstract":"Time-Lock Puzzles (TLPs) enable a client to lock a message such that a server can unlock it only after a specified time. They have diverse applications, such as scheduled payments, secret sharing, and zero-knowledge proofs. In this work, we present a scalable TLP designed for real-world scenarios involving a large number of puzzles, where clients or servers may lack the computational resources to handle high workloads. Our contributions are both theoretical and practical. From a theoretical standpoint, we formally define the concept of a Delegated Time-Lock Puzzle (D-TLP), establish its fundamental properties, and introduce an upper bound for TLPs, addressing a previously overlooked aspect. From a practical standpoint, we introduce the Efficient Delegated Time-Lock Puzzle (ED-TLP) protocol, which implements the D-TLP concept. This protocol enables both the client and server to securely outsource their resource-intensive tasks to third-party helpers. It enables real-time verification of solutions and guarantees their delivery within predefined time limits by integrating an upper bound and a fair payment algorithm. ED-TLP allows combining puzzles from different clients, enabling a solver to process them sequentially, significantly reducing computational resources, especially for a large number of puzzles or clients. ED-TLP is the first protocol of its kind. We have implemented ED-TLP and conducted a comprehensive analysis of its performance for up to 10,000 puzzles. The results highlight its significant efficiency in TLP applications, demonstrating that ED-TLP securely delegates 99% of the client's workload and 100% of the server's workload with minimal overhead.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.01280v3","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.01280v3.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"links_only","authors_date_abstract":"arXiv metadata, CC0 1.0 (https://info.arxiv.org/help/license), from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"delegated-time-lock-puzzle","repo_url":"https://github.com/danrr/generic-mitlp","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null},{"paper_slug":"delegated-time-lock-puzzle","repo_url":"https://github.com/danrr/TLP_lib","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}