> hashing password requires more than a random oracle because of the input small entropy so your argument is moot.

As I pointed out, SHA-512/256 allows you to safely do H(key|data).

But your original argument was along the lines of "H(key|data) makes sense intuitively. You have to understand the details in order to realize it's unsafe. Therefore a hash that allows H(key|data) is better".

This same line of reasoning, without modification, works to argue in favor of deploying Argon2 any place a hash is used. It's safe to use in that way, it additionally is safe to use for H(password), and you accept the exact same list of downsides.

Misuse-resistance constructions are important. But the problem with H(key|data), as both I and cperciva have pointed out, is that you've chosen an entirely inappropriate cryptographic primitive for the task at hand. A glaring indicator of this is stuffing multiple concepts into one function argument. A block cipher analogue would be something like AES-ECB(key, iv|plaintext). If you're cramming things into the wrong arguments of cryptographic primitives, you're generally going to have a very, very bad time.

That said, even by this criteria, SHA-512/256 is on the same footing as SHA-3. And has none of the downsides. For the third time, SHA-3 has no advantages here whatsoever.

> The fact that sha-3 has received less analyzis has already been debunked Here:https://twitter.com/aarontoponce/status/869973259969675264 .

There is nothing in that thread that even remotely suggests that the 9 years of analysis Keccak has received as a candidate for SHA-3, and then as a virtually-unused choice for SHA-3 carries the same weight as the 16 years of analysis we have of SHA-2 having been widely deployed. Not to mention the comparatively short amount of time we've been cryptanalyzing Sponge functions compared to the virtually 40 years we've had to understand Merkle-Damgård.

> Appeal to authority does nothing.

I am not arguing that they are right because they are authorities. I am pointing out that well-respected authorities are also in this thread and also making compelling arguments against generalized use of SHA-3.

Ahem: "It is well known as a fallacy, though it is most often used in a valid form."[1]

> NIST's cryptographers chose it.

As a backup, in the event of catastrophic cryptanalysis against SHA-2. From a NIST employee on NIST's own press release[2] announcing the SHA-3 winner:

"SHA-3 is very different from SHA-2 in design," says
NIST's Shu-jen Chang. "It doesn't replace SHA-2, which
has not shown any problem, but offers a backup. It
takes years to develop a new standard, and we wanted to
be prepared in case problems do occur."

As the SHA-3 competition went on and SHA-2 continued to resist the analysis that sunk SHA-1, NIST changed the criteria they were using to judge entrants. Instead of looking for a hash function that was all-around an improvement, they heavily prioritized looking for a hash function that was structurally different from SHA-2 (this is, in my opinion, essentially the only reason BLAKE2 wisn't chosen). SHA-3 won, not because it is better than SHA-2. It won because it was good enough while being different from SHA-2.

Being different from SHA-2 is not a sufficient reason to use it for general purposes today.

> People talked about heavy usages of SHA-3 in Ethereum or Chain here.

Having been chosen for Ethereum doesn't mean it was the best choice. It probably wasn't. Note that this is an actual argument from authority.

> I can tell you that one of the originator of SHA-3 created AES.

Irrelevant to whether or not you should actually be deploying SHA-3. Nobody's arguing it's insecure. We're arguing that it's always an inferior choice.

> Jp aumasson (creator or blake2), samuel neves and philipp jovanovic are using sponges woth NORX. Mike Hamburg is building Strobe based on keccak.

Again, irrelevant to the choice of SHA-3. Sponges are cool. I'm looking forward to more widespread application of sponges in the future. People working on new ciphers built on top of sponges does not advocate for the use of SHA-3, a specific sponge.

> I can name drop as well you see.

You've named NIST, who is explicitly on record saying that SHA-3 is there as a backup. You've named a guy who was "into it", you sort-of-but-not-really named "people/" who've said that Ethereum uses it (though it's not actually used in Ethereum's proof of work function, so I'm not sure you could call that "heavy" use). You've named one of the authors of SHA-3, and you've named people who are building totally different things based on the same underpinnings, but I can find no evidence of any of these named people are actually encouraging anyone to deploy SHA-3 over SHA-2.

I would love for you to link me to a single location where one of these named people advocates that. I don't think you can.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
[2]: https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2015/08/nist-releases-...