Thequestion"Streamciphers: deadoralive?"wasposedbyAdiShamir.Intended to provokedebate, the questioncouldnot havebeen better, ormorestarkly, put. However, itwasnotShamir'sintentiontosuggestthatstreamciphersthemselves were obsolete; rather he was questioning whether stream ciphers of a dedicated designwererelevantnowthattheAESispervasivelydeployedandcanbeusedas a perfectly acceptablestreamcipher. To explore this question the eSTREAM Project was launched in 2004, part of the EU-sponsored ECRYPT Framework VI Network of Excellence. The goal of the project was to encourage academia and industry to consider the "dead stream cipher" and to explore what could be achieved with a dedicated design. Now, after several years of hard work, the project has come to a close and the 16 ciphers in the ?nal phase of eSTREAM are the subject of this book. The designers of all the ?nalist ciphers are to be congratulated. Regardless of whether a particular algorithm appears in the ?nal portfolio, in reaching the third phase of eSTREAM all the algorithms constitute a signi?cant milestone in the development of stream ciphers. However, in addition to thanking all designers, implementers, and crypt- alysts who participated in eSTREAM, this is a ?tting place to o?er thanks to some speci?c individuals.