Looks like the default values have been moved recently to ed25519+cv25519, see: * https://github.com/gpg/gnupg/commit/ff31dde456f32950f0df6c974b4c41f1d650d68f I can see in the code that when "default" is used, the defauilt values should be used from parse_key_parameter_string() by calling: string = get_default_pubkey_algo (); But its not getting them, I'll try to gdb it further.