DFINITY Founder Accuses NEAR of Using ICP Signing Research

DFINITY founder Dominic Williams has accused NEAR Protocol of building a core part of its cross-chain products, Chain Signatures and NEAR Intents, on cryptographic research that DFINITY says it licenses exclusively for the Internet Computer (ICP).

In a long post on X on Oct 22, Williams said the matter "carries civil and criminal legal implications." Strong words, but so far that's all they are. No complaint or court filing from DFINITY has appeared in public records. When the accusation was first reported on Oct 22, NEAR had not given a public reply.

The stakes are real for NEAR's reputation. NEAR Intents has passed $35 billion in cumulative trading volume on NEAR's own figures, and it is the same product that has used its fees to buy back NEAR. A cross-chain product sells trust before anything else. A public argument over where its signing method came from lands right on that promise.

The Groth-Shoup Paper at the Centre of the Dispute

Williams points to a piece of research by Groth and Shoup. Its key idea is presignatures: part of the signing work is done ahead of time, so a transaction can be signed faster when it arrives. Williams says this design speeds up signing by roughly three times, and that it is what NEAR adopted.

Here is the awkward detail for anyone trying to judge the claim. The paper, "On the security of ECDSA with additive key derivation and presignatures," is openly published on IACR ePrint as 2021/1330 under a Creative Commons Attribution licence. It analyses the security of additive key derivation and presignatures, and proposes two fixes for weaknesses it finds: re-randomized presignatures and homogeneous key derivation.

Whether DFINITY holds a patent or an exclusive licence covering this work has not been established in the material available. For now, the exclusive-licence claim is Williams's description of DFINITY's rights.

NEAR's own documentation on additive key derivation links directly to the Groth-Shoup paper. Williams reads that link as evidence. A citation shows the paper was known to whoever wrote the docs. It doesn't, on its own, settle what NEAR was or wasn't allowed to do with it.

What Is the Cryptography Dispute About?

The central issue is threshold ECDSA, a cryptographic method that allows a group of participants to produce a digital signature without any one participant holding the complete private key.

This technology can help applications control assets across multiple blockchains without relying on a conventional bridge that holds users' funds in a single contract. NEAR uses multi-party computation infrastructure for Chain Signatures, which supports its broader chain-abstraction and cross-chain trading products.

Williams alleges that NEAR used a threshold-signature technique associated with research by DFINITY cryptographers Jens Groth and Victor Shoup. He says the relevant technology was licensed exclusively for use with the Internet Computer and argues that NEAR used it without authorization. He has also cited GitHub records in support of his claims.

There is an important distinction between using similar mathematics and infringing intellectual property. The underlying research was published publicly, but public availability does not by itself settle questions involving patents, licensing agreements or other legal rights. Those questions would require evidence about the specific implementation and the rights attached to it.

NEAR's public source code provides additional context. Its multi-party computation repository describes an OT-based ECDSA implementation originally derived from the Cait-Sith library, alongside other signature schemes.

A GitHub Change Williams Calls a Cover-Up

Williams also says NEAR has used the mechanism for about two and a half years, that GitHub records show it, and that NEAR is only now swapping algorithms to cover its tracks.

The change he cited is real. Pull request #4503 in NEAR's MPC repository, titled "feat(node): support cait-sith with online presign," was opened on Sept 22 and merged on Sept 25. Williams read it as an urgent downgrade to a simpler scheme that signs roughly three times slower.

The pull request doesn't explain itself in his terms, though. Neither it nor the related issue #4324 mentions DFINITY, and the engineering reason for the switch has not been confirmed.

Hiring Claims and an Offer to Share

Williams made two further claims that rest on his account alone: that NEAR recruited a former DFINITY employee, dismissed in 2021, to lead the relevant work, and that it hired two DFINITY engineers. Neither has been confirmed elsewhere.

He also struck a more open note. DFINITY, he said, would have shared the technology on fair terms, with attribution, had NEAR proposed working together. That reads less like a demand for damages and more like a complaint about credit, though his talk of legal consequences cuts the other way.

The timing adds a small twist. About half an hour before Williams posted, NEAR published an article saying its mainnet MPC network runs 17 independent operators with an 11-of-17 signing threshold, all inside trusted execution environments (secure hardware zones). Williams put NEAR's signing network at roughly eight servers, against an ICP subnet of about 50 nodes.

NEAR vs. ICP: What Comes Next?

NEAR enters the dispute with stronger visible market capitalization, DeFi TVL and recent Intents activity. Its challenge is to sustain growth while demonstrating that its cross-chain infrastructure remains secure, transparent and appropriately decentralized.

ICP has a smaller market valuation but is pursuing a broader onchain-computing model. Its challenge is to convert its infrastructure, AI development tools and computing ambitions into durable demand that can support its token economics.

The disagreement may ultimately become a question of licensing, attribution and implementation rather than a simple contest between two tokens. A legal resolution, a detailed technical response or independently reviewed code evidence would provide more clarity than social-media claims alone.

For now, NEAR's adoption metrics and ICP's computing-focused approach tell different stories. The market has assigned NEAR a substantially higher valuation, but that valuation does not settle the cryptographic dispute or determine which network will deliver greater long-term value.

The key developments to watch are whether NEAR responds publicly, whether DFINITY provides verifiable evidence of its claimed rights, and whether either side pursues formal legal action. Until then, the allegations should remain allegations and the comparison should be judged on evidence rather than loyalty to either ecosystem.