Quantum-resistant blockchains: How 9 top chains compare

The cryptography securing nearly every onchain transaction was designed before large-scale quantum computers were a realistic threat. Today, no quantum computer can break that security, but many chains are already preparing for the possibility.

So why prepare when the threat is not imminent? Because developing, testing, and deploying new security standards across a decentralized network can take years. Meanwhile, estimates for when quantum computers could pose a credible threat continue to shorten.

As a result, quantum resistance has moved beyond conference-panel discussions and into protocol roadmaps, approved proposals, and testnet deployments.

This article examines how the major networks Turnkey supports are preparing, what each is actually shipping, and what it means for teams building wallets, payments, and agent infrastructure today.

Why the quantum threat moved from theory to roadmap

“The advent of a cryptoanalytically relevant quantum computer is likely 7-15 years away.” -Michael Lewellen, Head of Solutions Engineering at Turnkey

On March 31, 2026, Google Quantum AI published research with Stanford and the Ethereum Foundation on the quantum threat to blockchain security.

Account security on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and most other blockchains relies on elliptic curve cryptography. Each wallet has a private key, which acts like a secret password used to authorize transactions, and a public key, which others can use to verify those transactions without learning the private key. 

A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could potentially work backward from the public key to discover the private key, allowing an attacker to control the wallet.

Google researchers estimated that a quantum computer could break the 256-bit elliptic curve cryptography used to protect most blockchain wallets with fewer than 500,000 physical qubits, the hardware components that perform quantum computing. That is roughly 20 times fewer than the previous best estimate, published in 2023.

The main takeaway of this research is not that quantum computers can break blockchain security today. It is that doing so may require far fewer resources than previously estimated, putting current quantum development closer to the required threshold. A machine with roughly 1,200 reliable, error-corrected logical qubits could pose a serious threat, narrowing the time blockchains have to adopt quantum-resistant security.

But today the nearer-term worry is "harvest now, decrypt later." 

Every public key ever revealed onchain is permanently downloadable, so an adversary can store exposed keys right now and derive the private keys once hardware catches up. Research groups estimate that roughly 6.9 million BTC, about a third of supply, already sit in addresses with exposed public keys.

What it means for a chain to be quantum-ready

“The NIST deprecates classical algorithms by 2030 and fully disallows them by 2035.” –Michael Lewellen, Head of Solutions Engineering at Turnkey

Blockchain networks are exploring different approaches to quantum security, but most are focused on four key areas:

1. Migration path. Can individual accounts move to a post-quantum scheme without a major disruption that forces every user, wallet, and validator to upgrade at once?
2. Signature scheme. What type of quantum-resistant signature will the chain use, and how will it balance security, performance, and transaction size?
3. Legacy and exposed funds. What happens to coins already sitting in vulnerable addresses, including dormant ones?
4. Crypto-agility. Can the chain swap schemes again later, since today's post-quantum standards may themselves need replacing?

To help make these decisions, chains look to government organizations such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). NIST evaluates and standardizes cryptographic algorithms designed to resist attacks from future quantum computers.

What are top chains doing to protect themselves against quantum threats? (9 examples)

Quantum readiness involves more than selecting new cryptography. A chain must also determine how to introduce it without disrupting the network or leaving existing accounts vulnerable.

Turnkey signs for all of these networks today at the level of the underlying cryptographic curve. The rest of this article looks at each roadmap, then at what controlled signing does and does not solve for quantum risk.

1. Ethereum and the EVM

In February 2026, Vitalik Buterin published a post-quantum roadmap identifying four parts of the protocol that need upgrades: validator consensus signatures (BLS), the commitment schemes used for data availability (KZG), account signatures (ECDSA), and the zero-knowledge proof systems used by rollups. The Ethereum Foundation's Post-Quantum team, formed in January 2026, now tracks the work in the open.

Rather than a single forced migration, EIP-8141 would let individual accounts adopt a post-quantum signature scheme voluntarily, so wallets that want protection early can opt in. Candidate account schemes under evaluation include Falcon, Dilithium, and SPHINCS+.

For validators, the plan is to replace BLS with leanXMSS, a hash-based scheme, and to aggregate the larger signatures efficiently with a minimal zero-knowledge virtual machine. The Foundation frames key Layer 1 infrastructure as targeted for roughly 2029, with full execution-layer migration continuing for years after that.

EVM-compatible networks are expected to inherit this account model and follow the EVM signature-migration path.

2. Bitcoin

Bitcoin took its first formal step toward quantum resistance in 2026. BIP-360, authored by Hunter Beast, Ethan Heilman, and Isabel Foxen Duke and originally circulated as Pay-to-Quantum-Resistant-Hash, was merged into the official Bitcoin BIP repository on February 11, 2026. It introduces a new output type that removes the spend path which exposes a public key onchain.

There is no mainnet deployment yet, any migration would be voluntary, and roughly a quarter to a third of all BTC already sits in addresses whose public keys are permanently exposed.

A companion proposal, BIP-361, published in April 2026 by Jameson Lopp and co-authors and titled "Post Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Sunset," would eventually stop accepting new payments to legacy address types and has opened a genuine debate, because enforcing it could freeze dormant coins, including holdings widely attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto.

3. Solana

Solana's post-quantum direction was set out in an April 2026 quantum readiness roadmap from the Solana Foundation, co-authored with the network's two main client teams, Anza and Jump Crypto's Firedancer.

Studying migration paths separately, both teams converged on the same signature scheme: Falcon, a NIST-selected post-quantum algorithm whose compact signatures fit Solana's high-throughput, low-latency design. Early Falcon implementations are already published on GitHub for review and testing, with schemes like Dilithium still evaluated as alternatives.

The plan is phased and wallet-first rather than an immediate protocol change. It moves through continued research, then introducing post-quantum signatures for new wallets if the threat becomes credible, and eventually migrating existing wallets, staging the transition to avoid disrupting the network. 

4. Sui

Sui is targeting a full account path built on a NIST-standardized scheme. Its implementation uses a variant of the Dilithium standard, and the team reports the core implementation is built and benchmarked, with verification cost close enough to traditional private keys that per-signature network cost does not rise.

The rollout is staged. Quantum-safe vaults are targeted for mainnet in 2026, native ML-DSA-65 accounts are targeted to reach testnet by the end of 2026, and native account authentication on mainnet is targeted for the first quarter of 2027.

Sui's pitch is that this is a feature addition rather than a rebuild. Because the network was designed for cryptographic agility, a new signature scheme can be added without changing consensus or existing state, and users keep the same recovery phrase and address. The honest cost is signature size, which is larger than a traditional keypair.

5. NEAR

NEAR is pursuing a protocol-level migration that is transparent to end users. Its plan implements NIST-standardized ML-DSA (FIPS-204) signatures, which went live on NEAR mainnet in July 2026 with network upgrade 2.13. Account holders can now rotate to a quantum-safe key in a single step, so token holders and applications would not need to take manual action.

That approach positions NEAR as one of the earliest Layer 1 networks to ship standardized post-quantum account signatures at the protocol level. Wallet and tooling support is still expanding, so builders should confirm the current stage against NEAR's own channels before relying on it.

6. Tron

Tron has been one of the most vocal chains regarding quantum threats. Founder Justin Sun announced in April 2026 that the network would integrate NIST-standardized post-quantum signatures, and described the goal as becoming the first quantum-resistant network. Post-quantum signatures were exercised on a Tron testnet in July 2026.

The timeline has moved. An original Q3 2026 mainnet target was later reframed, at an August 2026 conference, as making the whole network quantum-resistant by late 2026. Some observers have asked for specifics on which algorithms will ship on the mainnet  and which external cryptographers are involved, so the current status is best read as a public commitment plus testnet work rather than a completed mainnet migration.

7. Algorand

Algorand is further along than most. It has run post-quantum cryptography in production since 2022, when it deployed State Proofs signed with Falcon, a NIST-selected lattice-based signature scheme, to protect the chain's history and cross-chain verification.

It has since extended that protection to user accounts: the first Falcon-signed transaction landed on mainnet on November 3, 2025, through Falcon LogicSig accounts, and native Falcon-1024 accounts went live on mainnet in August 2026, voted in through the Algorand v5.0.0 upgrade. 

8. Aptos

Aptos has a formal proposal on the table: AIP-137, published in December 2025, would add a hash-based NIST scheme as an optional account signature alongside the option of a regular private key. The proposal still needs to pass a community governance vote, so Aptos sits between "watching" and "shipping": a concrete plan proposed, not yet activated.

9. Arc

Arc, Circle's new Layer 1, which uses USDC to pay network fees, opens to the public on September 16, 2026, and its four-step plan works outward from the user's own account.

The first step is the account. At launch, Arc offers an optional quantum-safe wallet signature built on a hash method approved by NIST. Nobody is forced to move, so existing accounts keep working.

The next three steps widen the ring. Private transactions get quantum-safe encryption, so balances and counterparties cannot be recorded now and unscrambled later. Circle then upgrades its own supporting systems, and the machines that run the network are hardened last.

Arc says leaving those machines for last is deliberate, because blocks are settled in under a second and that leaves an attacker very little room. 

Arc's own documentation says the quantum features are planned and not yet available, that hardware wallet support will take time, and that the method it picks may still change as the standards settle.

Where the signing layer fits with these onchain preparations

Holding a key inside an enclave prevents that key from being copied or exfiltrated, but it does not change what happens onchain. If a network uses traditional elliptic curve cryptography, the public key is still exposed onchain when funds move, and quantum resistance is a property of the chain's signature scheme, not of where the private key is stored. Secure key storage and quantum-resistant signing are different problems.

The migration itself will not be a single event. NIST's own guidance treats crypto-agility, the ability to swap cryptographic schemes without redesigning the systems around them, as the core discipline for this transition, precisely because today's post-quantum standards may need to be replaced again.

A signing layer organized around a small set of interchangeable primitives, rather than per-chain hardcoding, is built for exactly that kind of change as networks standardize their post-quantum schemes.

Turnkey: Supporting chains as they prepare for quantum threats

“What the strongest efforts share is a design that lets signature schemes change without breaking everything built on top of them.” –Michael Lewellen, Head of Solutions Engineering at Turnkey

There is no single “most quantum-ready” chain. Readiness depends on how each network is used and how much of its roadmap has shipped rather than simply been announced. 

Ethereum has the most extensive roadmap, NEAR and Algorand have taken post-quantum account signatures live on mainnet, Sui is advancing toward the same, Bitcoin has merged its first proposal, Solana has converged on Falcon with early implementations already and Tron has begun testing its approach on its testnet.

As the quote above says, the strongest solutions share one principle: signature schemes need to evolve without breaking everything built on top of them. For builders, the practical path is to use infrastructure that can adopt new schemes as they become available while enforcing secure, policy-controlled signing today.

Explore Turnkey’s infrastructure for building across these networks, and get started with Turnkey today‍