I noticed that Victor Shoup is an author. I recognize the name from citations in papers by cryptographer D. J. Bernstein (known for creating ChaCha20, Ed25519, qmail, and more). Shoup is referenced in over 100 pages on Bernstein's cr.yp.to domain (https://www.google.com/search?q=shoup+site%3Acr.yp.to), so my first impression is to regard this paper as potentially legit and important.
That said, my very uneducated guess is that the problem being solved here is not important for many users of distributed consensus algorithms. If you have a bunch of nodes that need to agree on something, you generally don't mind sharing a cryptographic secret among them as part of the set-up.
That said, my very uneducated guess is that the problem being solved here is not important for many users of distributed consensus algorithms. If you have a bunch of nodes that need to agree on something, you generally don't mind sharing a cryptographic secret among them as part of the set-up.