The Evolution of MPC: From Secure but Slow to Fast and Scalable
Introduction
Multi-Party Computation (MPC) has been a pillar of advanced cryptography research for decades. It allows multiple parties to perform computations on their combined data, without revealing their individual inputs to each other. But while MPC has always been recognized for its robust security guarantees, it initially struggled with practicality due to computational and communication overheads.
Recent breakthroughs, however, have fundamentally changed the MPC landscape, making it much faster and more scalable. Now it’s not only relevant for specialized cryptographic research, it’s also finding a home in crypto and blockchain applications. In these areas, security and speed are both paramount.
The Origins of MPC
MPC traces back to the mid-1980s, most famously via Yao’s Garbled Circuits for secure two-party computation. The underlying idea was simple yet groundbreaking: enable participants to compute a shared function over their inputs without revealing anything beyond the final output.
While the theory was compelling, the practical challenges were huge. Early protocols were computationally expensive and required significant back-and-forth communication among the parties, effectively limiting real-world adoption for many years. That included blockchain and crypto use cases, which require both high security and high throughput. Early MPC solutions just couldn’t keep up with the transaction speeds or user volumes demanded by these environments. Changes were needed.
Overcoming the Computational Hurdle
Over the past decade, several advancements have made MPC much more practical for real-world use cases:
- Optimized protocols: Newer MPC frameworks like SPDZ have significantly reduced communication rounds. While SPDZ excels at general-purpose secure computation, many specialized protocols exist for tasks like threshold signatures.
- Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC): ECC offers strong security with smaller key sizes, making cryptographic operations more efficient. This yields a direct benefit for MPC-based applications since smaller keys lead to reduced computational overhead.
- Threshold Signature Schemes (TSS): TSS-MPC protocols focus specifically on distributed key generation and signing. Unlike more general MPC protocols that can compute any function securely, TSS is specialized for signature algorithms like ECDSA or EdDSA.
- Hardware acceleration: Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) can accelerate certain MPC tasks by providing a secure enclave for computations. However, TEEs rely on a hardware trust model, which differs from purely cryptographic MPC protocols that use mathematical guarantees and distributed trust instead of hardware.
These breakthroughs have combined to make MPC far more efficient. In fact, some threshold signature protocols can now achieve signing speeds in the dozens or even hundreds of transactions per second. This is a massive leap from just a few transactions per second several years ago.
Dynamic’s History with MPC
We’ve been evaluating MPC since 2022. We continued to evaluate it in 2023 and 2024, but each time concluded it wasn’t yet ready for the performance and scalability we required. But in the past couple of years, MPC has made major improvements by increasing throughput and reducing communication overhead.
As of early 2025, we currently employ TSS-MPC to protect user wallets. In this model, the underlying private key components are never fully reconstructed, eliminating single points of failure and greatly reducing the risk of compromise.
Leveraging DKLs19 for ECDSA & FROST for EdDSA
At Dynamic, we specifically use the DKLs19 threshold ECDSA approach for secure key generation and signing. We rely on FROST for EdDSA, providing us with a flexible, round-optimized protocol well-suited to Ed25519-based wallets. With the recent improvements that we mentioned, we strongly believe that 2025 could be “the year of TSS-MPC.”
Exploring MPC Alternatives
When evaluating the best solution for Dynamic, we also explored Shamir Secret Sharing and alternatively a server-side secure storage of the full key. Ultimately, we determined that the following risks made them unfit for our needs:
- Reconstruction risk: Traditional Shamir Secret Sharing (SSS) fully reconstructs the private key during signing, exposing it temporarily. By contrast, TSS-MPC never fully reassembles the key at any moment.
- Lack of threshold flexibility: SSS-based thresholds are often fixed once set, whereas TSS-MPC can dynamically change thresholds or refresh key shares without revealing secrets. This allows for flexibility in choosing which threshold is best suited for any given use case.
- Centralization risk: Storing a full key on a single secure server places too much trust in one location. TSS-MPC’s distributed approach mitigates the possibility of a single compromised server or insider attack undermining the entire wallet security.
Fast Versus Scalable: Ongoing Challenges
While TSS-MPC and other protocols are much faster than before, truly scalable MPC still faces challenges. MPC protocols can require complex network communication patterns and sometimes rely on a “setup.” Achieving near-instant responsiveness when dozens of signers or nodes are involved demands careful engineering and robust infrastructure.
As a result, researchers are continuing to explore:
- Round efficiency: Minimizing how many “rounds” of communication are needed to complete a signature or computation.
- Offline/online phases: Splitting out heavy computation tasks into an offline phase can reduce latency during the online phase.
- Network optimization: Handling high-latency or unreliable connections is a key obstacle for global and decentralized deployments.
Our Thoughts: Where MPC Is Headed Next
Although MPC has already come a long way from its beginnings, there’s still potential for further improvements. Over the following years, we expect to see:
- Stronger hybrid approaches: Pairing MPC with Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) is a powerful combination. ZKPs ensure data remains hidden while proving correctness. Coupled with MPC, this could enable trustless computations on confidential data for privacy-first applications.
- Greater adoption in DeFi and beyond: As efficiency continues to rise, so will the range of real-world DeFi and fintech solutions that rely on MPC.
- Onchain privacy & confidential smart contracts: MPC provides an extra layer of confidentiality for smart contracts. This decreases risk, helps secure sensitive data, and boosts user confidence in decentralized ecosystems.
Conclusion
MPC’s evolution from a slow theory to a fast and scalable reality is driving a wave of innovation in security-sensitive industries. Combined with other cryptographic techniques like TSS, MPC is set to reshape the future of decentralized technologies.
As a wallet-as-a-service provider, Dynamic leverages TSS-MPC to protect wallets without ever fully reconstructing their underlying key material—unlocking a whole new era of trustless interactions and data privacy. At Dynamic, we’re proud to be part of this revolution and excited to see how far MPC can go in 2025 and beyond.
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