Signature Schemes
Tidecoin implements five signature schemes from NIST’s PQC standardization process. Falcon-512 has been active since genesis; Falcon-1024 and ML-DSA-44/65/87 are built and activate with AuxPoW. Each scheme has a unique 1-byte prefix in its public key serialization.
| Scheme | Prefix | Public Key | Signature | NIST Level | Standard | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Falcon-512 | 0x07 | 897 B | 666 B | 1 | Draft FIPS 206 | Live |
| Falcon-1024 | 0x08 | 1,793 B | 1,280 B | 5 | Draft FIPS 206 | Built |
| ML-DSA-44 | 0x09 | 1,312 B | 2,420 B | 2 | FIPS 204 | Built |
| ML-DSA-65 | 0x0A | 1,952 B | 3,309 B | 3 | FIPS 204 | Built |
| ML-DSA-87 | 0x0B | 2,592 B | 4,627 B | 5 | FIPS 204 | Built |
See Scheme Registry for the canonical on-wire layout and activation rules, Signature Encoding for the byte format, and Verification Modes for legacy vs. strict semantics.
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