We show that any multiparty functionality can be evaluated using a 2-round protocol with perfect correctness and perfect semihonest security, provided that the majority of parties are honest. This settles the round complexity of information-theoretic semihonest multiparty computation, resolving a longstanding open question [Y. Ishai and E. Kushilevitz, Randomizing polynomials: A new representation with applications to round-efficient secure computation, in Proceedings of the 41st Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science FOCS 2000, IEEE Computer Society, 2000, pp. 294--304]. The protocol is efficient for
NC1 functionalities. Furthermore, given black-box access to a one-way function, the protocol can be made efficient for any polynomial functionality, at the cost of only guaranteeing computational security. Our results are based on a new notion of multiparty randomized encoding which extends and relaxes the standard notion of randomized encoding of functions [Y. Ishai and E. Kushilevitz, Randomizing polynomials: A new representation with applications to round-efficient secure computation, in Proceedings of the 41st Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science FOCS 2000, IEEE Computer Society, 2000, pp. 294--304]. The property of a multiparty randomized encoding (MPRE) is that if the functionality
g is an encoding of the functionality
f, then for any (permitted) coalition of players, their respective outputs and inputs in
g allow them to simulate their respective inputs and outputs in
f, without learning anything else, including the other outputs of
f. We further introduce a new notion of effective degree, and show that the round complexity of a functionality
f is characterized by the degree of its MPRE. We construct degree-2 MPREs for general functionalities in several settings under different assumptions, and use these constructions to obtain 2-round protocols. Our constructions also give rise to new protocols in the client-server model with optimal round complexity.