RustCrypto / RustCrypto/elliptic-curves

`ed448-goldilocks`: merge `*Scalar` types and forego RFC 8032 encoding

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Dominant language
Rust
Stars
874
Forks
299
Avg merge
1d 4h
Merged PRs (30d)
12

Description

There were initially two motivations to separate Scalar types:

  1. According to RFC 8032 Ed448 key encoding should have 57 bytes.
  2. hash2curve::FromOkm could only be implemented once on the Scalar type, setting the length regardless of the curve.

We solved 2. in #1391.

I would like to get rid of the 1. motivation as well by just not following RFC 8032 here. The RFC has a specific encoding for signing keys that involves using SHAKE256. This seems quite unnecessary to me and would make encoding/decoding EdwardsScalar quite expensive.

Therefor I propose that we differentiate between scalars and signing keys, which we already do via ExpandedSecretKey internally on our own SigningKey already.

In conclusion: we can merge the Scalar types back together again and they will all have a 56-byte encoding. Ed448 signing keys will not be affected and point serialization formats won't be affected.

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing the Scalar and EdwardsScalar types, the hash2curve::FromOkm implementation from #1391, and the existing SigningKey/ExpandedSecretKey handling. Determine how to merge the scalar types with 56-byte encoding while preserving Ed448 signing-key and point serialization formats; RFC 8032 is the relevant encoding reference.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
cryptography
Issue type
Refactor
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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