A time-lock puzzle allows a sender to hide a message in a puzzle such that recovering the message requires substantially more sequential computation than the time required to generate the puzzle, even when parallel computation is allowed. Applications of time-lock puzzles include timed-release encryption, sealed-bid auctions, electronic voting, fair contract signing, coin flipping, and Byzantine consensus. However, time-lock puzzles are known to be impossible in the classical random oracle model.
To overcome the classical barrier, in this work we consider quantum time-lock puzzles, in which the puzzle itself is a quantum state. Our construction in the quantum random oracle model achieves generation in one oracle round, solving in at most
T oracle rounds, and security against polynomial-width quantum adversaries of depth
o(T) for every polynomially bounded delay
T=T(λ), resolving an open problem posed by Mahmoody, Moran, and Vadhan (2011).