add EC Curve secp256k1

[pdtgct]

This PR adds support for Elliptic Curve S256, aka secp256k1. The curve is defined in Standards for Efficient Cryptography, SEC 2: Recommended Elliptic Curve Domain Parameters, Section 2.4.1 and commonly used in Blockchain systems, starting with Bitcoin. See Bitcoin Wiki secp256k1.

Go Version Change

Due to the minimum requirement of the library dependency on github.com/decred/dcrd/dcrec/secp256k1/v4 v4.1.0, this change increases the minimum version of go to 1.17.

Travis CI failures

⚠️ The Travis CI builds are failing because Travis is configured to use Go 1.13. ⚠️

If you could update Travis CI to use Go 1.17 those errors would be resolved.

PR Additions

• a dependency on the library, github.com/decred/dcrd/dcrec/secp256k1/v4 v4.1.0 which is a copyfree license and includes the Name in the Curve params, "secp256k1" which is the same name used by HSMs, such as AWS Cloud HSM, openssl and SoftHSM2.
• the curve asn1.ObjectIdentifier{1, 3, 132, 0, 10} is correct for secp256k1, see oid-info.com

The contents of this PR with secp256k1 have been used in an internal project that used SoftHSM2.

[pdtgct]

I will keep this Pull Request open, but this project does not appear to be currently maintained.

If anyone is interested in the content presented here, I will be working off a Fork, at https://github.com/pdtgct/crypto11.

[Nicolas-Peiffer]

Hello @pdtgct , thank you 🙏 for you interest and your contribution. I am one of the new maintainers of crypto11.

In 2026 the big project for crypto11 is to add the support of PKCS#11 v3.2 and the support of the ML-KEM PQC algorithm:

• add support for pkcs11 v3.2 ml-kem #131
• We work on this branch mainly: pkcs11-v3.2-ml-kem.
• It will lead to a crypto11@v2, as there are many changes, including we are using a new PKCS11 implementation eclipse-keypont/pkcs11-go.
• Summary of the changes here: pkcs11-v3.2-ml-kem/CHANGELOG.md

The other big project for 2026 is giving + moving the crypto11 project under the Eclipse Foundation.

v2 and further gives us an opportunity to look at stale PR like yours. At this stage, I am not sure what to do with your contribution dating from 2022.

What is your opinion? Is-it still a feature you need?