commit: a standalone construct

In cryptography, a commitment scheme lets one party commit to a chosen value while keeping it hidden, and later reveal it in a way the other party can check, so the value is fixed at commit time but disclosed only at reveal time. Naor's 1991 Bit commitment using pseudorandomness gave a construction and named the two properties every such scheme needs: hiding, so the committed value stays secret until the reveal, and binding, so the committer cannot later open it to a different value. The referent is a sealed, tamper-evident promise used in protocols like coin flipping and zero-knowledge proofs, not a snapshot of code, a durable database write, or a court order confining a person.[1]

Unit

One commit-and-reveal pair binding a party to a hidden value

Recovery means

The value is opened in a later reveal phase; a binding scheme prevents opening it to any other value

Measured by

Judged by its hiding and binding properties under stated cryptographic assumptions