There are also contests run by groups without any NSA affiliation, such as the CAESAR contest for authenticated encryption [1] and, relevant to this subject, th

There are also contests run by groups without any NSA affiliation, such as the CAESAR contest for authenticated encryption [1] and, relevant to this subject, the Password Hashing Competition [2], which recently decided on a pretty impressive winner. [1] http://competitions.cr.yp.to/index.html http://competitions.cr.yp.to/index.html [2] https://password-hashing.net/ https://password-hashing.net/