Quantum one-time programs (Broadbent, Gutoski and Stebila, CRYPTO 2013) or OTPs for short, enable a functionality to be encoded into a quantum token that can be evaluated on a single chosen input and then becomes unusable. While powerful, this primitive is inherently stateless and tied to a setting in which a quantum token needs to be issued and distributed for every single evaluation of a circuit. This raises a natural question: can the one-time computation paradigm be extended to richer, stateful forms of controlled access, and would such an extension offer inherent advantages beyond standard OTPs? We introduce $\textit{query-limited RAM programs}$ (QLPs), a RAM-generalization of QOTPs that supports structured, stateful computation under bounded or policy-driven access. QLPs allow controlled sequences of evaluations while preventing adversarial forking or rollback of computational state. This enables new applications beyond stateless one-time programs, including quantum tokens for Turing Machines whose size depends only on $\textit{code length}$ (and not runtime), transferable $k$ -time or budget-limited programs, and low-communication mechanisms for delegating computation in settings such as Software-as-a-Service. To construct QLPs, we introduce $\textit{one-shot programs}$ , unifying one-shot signatures (Amos, Georgiou, Kiayias and Zhandry, STOC 2020) with the single effective query paradigm (Gupte, Liu, Raizes, Roberts and Vaikuntanathan, STOC 2025). We prove that one-shot programs generically imply query-limited programs, demonstrating that the strengthened unclonability guarantees of one-shot signatures translate into enhanced functionality. Along the way, we clarify the relationship between signature-token primitives and quantum one-time programs via generic constructions, essentially showing that one-time signing programs imply one-time general computation.Quantum one-time programs (Broadbent, Gutoski and Stebila, CRYPTO 2013) or OTPs for short, enable a functionality to be encoded into a quantum token that can be evaluated on a single chosen input and then becomes unusable. While powerful, this primitive is inherently stateless and tied to a setting in which a quantum token needs to be issued and distributed for every single evaluation of a circuit. This raises a natural question: can the one-time computation paradigm be extended to richer, stateful forms of controlled access, and would such an extension offer inherent advantages beyond standard OTPs? We introduce $\textit{query-limited RAM programs}$ (QLPs), a RAM-generalization of QOTPs that supports structured, stateful computation under bounded or policy-driven access. QLPs allow controlled sequences of evaluations while preventing adversarial forking or rollback of computational state. This enables new applications beyond stateless one-time programs, including quantum tokens for Turing Machines whose size depends only on $\textit{code length}$ (and not runtime), transferable $k$-time or budget-limited programs, and low-communication mechanisms for delegating computation in settings such as Software-as-a-Service. To construct QLPs, we introduce $\textit{one-shot programs}$, unifying one-shot signatures (Amos, Georgiou, Kiayias and Zhandry, STOC 2020) with the single effective query paradigm (Gupte, Liu, Raizes, Roberts and Vaikuntanathan, STOC 2025). We prove that one-shot programs generically imply query-limited programs, demonstrating that the strengthened unclonability guarantees of one-shot signatures translate into enhanced functionality. Along the way, we clarify the relationship between signature-token primitives and quantum one-time programs via generic constructions, essentially showing that one-time signing programs imply one-time general computation.

quant-pharXiv:2609.40194Oct 1, 20260 citations

Large-Scale Secure Computation: Multi-party Computation for (Parallel) RAM Programs

Elette Boyle, Kai-Min Chung, Rafael Pass

Lecture notes in computer scienceJan 1, 201554 citations

Secure Multiparty RAM Computation in Constant Rounds

Sanjam Garg, Divya Gupta, Peihan Miao +1 more

Lecture notes in computer scienceJan 1, 201627 citations

DELEGATING COMPUTATION VIA NO-SIGNALING STRATEGIES

Yael Tauman Kalai

International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM)May 1, 20190 citations

\textit{query-limited RAM programs}

(QLPs), a RAM-generalization of QOTPs that supports structured, stateful computation under bounded or policy-driven access. QLPs allow controlled sequences of evaluations while preventing adversarial forking or rollback of computational state. This enables new applications beyond stateless one-time programs, including quantum tokens for Turing Machines whose size depends only on

\textit{code length}

(and not runtime), transferable

k

-time or budget-limited programs, and low-communication mechanisms for delegating computation in settings such as Software-as-a-Service. To construct QLPs, we introduce

\textit{one-shot programs}

, unifying one-shot signatures (Amos, Georgiou, Kiayias and Zhandry, STOC 2020) with the single effective query paradigm (Gupte, Liu, Raizes, Roberts and Vaikuntanathan, STOC 2025). We prove that one-shot programs generically imply query-limited programs, demonstrating that the strengthened unclonability guarantees of one-shot signatures translate into enhanced functionality. Along the way, we clarify the relationship between signature-token primitives and quantum one-time programs via generic constructions, essentially showing that one-time signing programs imply one-time general computation.