Verifiable secret sharing (VSS for short) is a fundamental tool for the design of secure cryptographic protocols.Its notion was proposed in 1985.From then on

it has been drawing the attentions of many researchers in the fields of cryptography and information security

and a great deal of achievement has been made in the field of VSS and its applications.In this paper

we analyze and survey in detail the main results available in literature in the field.We also analyze the development trend of the researches in the field and point out some research directions that deserve taking into account.