RSA public key of dead cryptographers Two cryptographic schemes—RSA accumulators, and RSA-based Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs) such as this one—require an RSA modulus to operate. These RSA constructions are secure if the trapdoor, namely the factorisation of the RSA modulus, is secret. In the context of a blockchain we do not want to trust anyone with the trapdoor.

The RSA public key of a dead (or presumed dead) cryptographer could be acceptable as a "trustless" RSA modulus. (Or at least, one of several moduli for an accumulator or a VDF built from multiple parallel sub-accumulators or sub-VDFs.) The idea is that the trapdoor, stored in the cryptographer's brain, disappears upon death. I tried to find an RSA key (e.g. from a PGP key) for Aaron Swartz and Satoshi Nakamoto, without success.

Are there famous dead cryptographers that have an RSA public key attached to their name?
What you're looking for is hard-to-factor numbers where no one knows the factorization.

One approach to do this is to use the larger numbers in the RSA Factoring Challenge.  These are composite numbers selected by RSA Laboratories, in an attempt to encourage research on factorization methods.  As such, they went to great lengths to make sure that no one knew the factorization (including destroying the PC that generated the factors afterwards).

While the smaller numbers on the list have been factored, the larger ones (including RSA2048) have not.

I believe that this would address the problem you are attempting to solve.