Dilithium (CRYSTALS-Dilithium)

Dilithium, formally CRYSTALS-Dilithium, is the original name of the lattice-based digital signature scheme that NIST standardized as ML-DSA in FIPS 204. It was submitted to the NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization process and selected as a primary signature algorithm in 2022.

#From Dilithium to ML-DSA

For the final standard NIST renamed the scheme ML-DSA (Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Algorithm) and published it as FIPS 204 in August 2024. As with the lattice KEM, the standardized algorithm differs in some parameters and encoding from the original Dilithium submission, so the names should be read as referring to the same underlying design rather than byte-for-byte identical schemes. Dilithium and ML-DSA both produce a Digital signature scheme whose security rests on lattice problems. Papers and code from before 2024 use the Dilithium name; standards-compliant systems use ML-DSA.