NIST would like to announce the 32 candidates that will be moving on to the 2nd round of the NIST LWC Standardization Process.  The second-round candidates of the NIST LWC standardization process are:

• ACE
• ASCON
• COMET
• DryGASCON
• Elephant
• ESTATE
• ForkAE
• GIFT-COFB
• Gimli
• Grain-128AEAD
• HYENA
• ISAP
• KNOT
• LOTUS-AEAD & LOCUS-AEAD
• mixFeed
• ORANGE
• Oribatida
• PHOTON-Beetle
• Pyjamask
• Romulus
• SAEAES
• Saturnin
• SKINNY-AEAD/-HASH
• SPARKLE (SCHWAEMM and ESCH)
• SPIX
• SpoC
• Spook
• Subterranean 2.0
• SUNDAE-GIFT
• TinyJambu
• WAGE
• Xoodyak

We would like to thank all submitters for their efforts in this standardization process. We would also like to thank those in the cryptographic community who have analyzed the proposals and shared their comments officially, through the forum, or published papers on various technical aspects of the candidates.

Due to the large number of submissions and the short timeline of the NIST lightweight cryptography standardization process, NIST has decided to eliminate some of the candidates from consideration early in the first evaluation phase in order to focus analysis on the more promising candidates. 

NIST will soon publish a report on the selection process that will be available from the LWC Project Page. 

For the second-round candidates, NIST will give the submission teams the opportunity to provide updated specifications and implementations to correct typos and implementation bugs. The deadline for these updates is September 27, 2019 11:59pm EDT.  NIST will review the proposed modifications and publish the accepted updates shortly afterwards. No design changes will be accepted in this phase.

The second round is expected to last 12 months. NIST will be hosting the next Lightweight Cryptography Workshop on November 4-6, 2019 in Gaithersburg, MD. Please see the LWC 2019 Event Page for further information regarding the workshop.

Questions may be directed to lightweight-crypto@nist.gov.