An open competition is a public process for submitting cryptographic designs and evaluating them through successive rounds of analysis. Researchers, industry groups, or governments may begin one when they need a new cryptographic primitive, construction, standard, or protocol. section 1.7
An open competition can arise from several practical starting points:
- Researchers may launch one after inventing a new primitive or construction. section 1.7
- Industry groups may use one when they need a new standard for interoperable systems. section 1.7
- Government organizations may use one when developing cryptography for mandated standards. section 1.7
Figure 1.16 The ideal life cycle for a cryptographic algorithm starts when cryptographers instantiate a concept in a white paper. For example, AES is an instantiation of the concept of symmetric encryption (there are many more symmetric encryption algorithms out there). A construction can then be standardized: everybody agrees to implement it a certain way to maximize interoperability. Then support is created by implementing the standard in different languages.
Place the competition within the broader lifecycle: a cryptographic concept becomes a construction, then a standardized design, and finally receives implementations in different languages. section 1.7
