T3AT: Threshold-authorized, Threshold-redeemable, and non-transferable anonymous tokens

Author

• Xincheng Li
• Jian Shen
• Jianting Ning
• Meng HAO, Singapore Management UniversityFollow
• Leo Yu Zhang

Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

1-2026

Abstract

Anonymous authentication mechanisms play an increasingly critical role in digital ecosystems by enabling users to prove eligibility without revealing identity information. Anonymous tokens serve as fundamental cryptographic primitives for privacy-preserving access control. However, existing solutions often rely on trusted hardware or suffer from centralization issues, such as single points of failure (SPoF) and strong trust assumptions, to enforce non-transferability. In this work, we construct a threshold BBS+ signing protocol using verifiable multiplication-to-addition (MtA) techniques derived from vector oblivious linear evaluation (VOLE). The security of the proposed threshold signature scheme is rigorously established within the Universal Composability (UC) framework. Building upon this foundation, we introduce the first threshold-authorized and threshold-redeemable, and non-transferable anonymous tokens named T3AT. T3AT enables collaborative issuance and verification in the malicious adversary and dishonest majority settings while achieving non-transferability, unlinkability, and unforgeability without relying on trusted hardware or centralized authorities. Our performance evaluation demonstrates the practicality, efficiency, and scalability of T3AT, effectively bridging the gap between anonymous tokens and threshold-based authorization and authentication for privacy-enhanced access control.

Keywords

Anonymous tokens, non-transferability, privacy preservation, threshold authorization, threshold redemption

Discipline

Information Security

Publication

IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security

Volume

21

ISSN

1556-6013

Identifier

10.1109/TIFS.2026.3684835

Publisher

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Citation

Li, Xincheng; Shen, Jian; Ning, Jianting; HAO, Meng; and Zhang, Leo Yu. T3AT: Threshold-authorized, Threshold-redeemable, and non-transferable anonymous tokens. (2026). IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security. 21,.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/11112

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1109/TIFS.2026.3684835