The narrative around the threat of quantum computing has circulated in the crypto industry for years. But in 2026, the conversation shifted from theoretical concerns to concrete engineering actions.
On May 7, NEAR Protocol officially announced its plans to add post-quantum cryptography support to its network. NEAR One CTO Anton Astafiev detailed the implementation strategy in the official technical blog and simultaneously confirmed the initiative to the community on X. According to the roadmap, this testnet version aims to launch by the end of Q2 2026, making NEAR one of the first mainstream public blockchains to systematically integrate post-quantum cryptography at the mainnet level.
The timing of this move is particularly noteworthy. Just over a month earlier, on March 30, 2026, Google Quantum AI, in collaboration with the Ethereum Foundation and Stanford University researchers, released a white paper that sent shockwaves through the industry. The paper systematically assessed the resources required for quantum computers to break cryptocurrency cryptography, concluding that previous estimates had been reduced by about 20 times—breaking the 256-bit elliptic curve cryptography used by Bitcoin and Ethereum might require fewer than 500,000 physical quantum qubits. The same paper further expanded the attack discussion from Bitcoin private key cracking to broader attack surfaces, including Ethereum smart contracts, staking consensus, and data availability sampling.
The ripple effects of this news had barely settled when, on April 24, Italian independent researcher Giancarlo Lelli used publicly rentable quantum hardware to successfully crack a 15-bit elliptic curve encrypted private key, earning the 1 BTC bounty set by Project Eleven. The contours of the quantum threat are moving from laboratory papers to verifiable engineering boundaries.
NEAR’s announcement comes against this backdrop, and the technical rationale behind it warrants a closer look.
What Has NEAR Done? Protocol-Level Integration of Post-Quantum Cryptography
According to Anton Astafiev’s technical article, NEAR Protocol currently supports two signature schemes: EdDSA (Ed25519) and ECDSA (secp256k1), neither of which are quantum-safe. The core of this update is the addition of FIPS-204 (ML-DSA, formerly known as CRYSTALS-Dilithium) to the existing architecture. This lattice-based post-quantum signature scheme, approved by NIST, was officially standardized as one of the first NIST post-quantum cryptography standards in August 2024.
Once implemented, any NEAR account holder can rotate their keys to the post-quantum secure signature scheme by executing a single transaction, eliminating the need for complex address migration processes. This design leverages the architectural advantages of NEAR’s account model. Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum, NEAR’s account system decouples from cryptography—each account is controlled via "access keys" that can be rotated, rather than being permanently tied to a specific public-private key pair. For users, key rotation is simply an on-chain transaction, with no need to create new addresses, transfer assets, or modify smart contract interaction logic.
Astafiev specifically noted that NEAR’s early design team considered post-quantum security issues from the outset. This long-term vision now gives NEAR a structural differentiation advantage over other public blockchains.
Another important aspect is the wallet ecosystem’s coordinated response. Near One has partnered with software and hardware wallet developers, including Ledger, to plan post-quantum support solutions. Currently, most hardware wallets do not support quantum-safe signatures, and not all existing devices are capable of doing so. Near One’s strategy is to work directly with manufacturers to accelerate the rollout of new solutions.
On the cross-chain front, NEAR’s Chain Signature MPC network currently supports threshold signatures for more than 35 public blockchains. The Defuse team is developing quantum-safe cross-chain signature solutions for NEAR Intents users, aiming to provide a quantum-safe environment for ecosystems slower to migrate to post-quantum cryptography. As Astafiev stated, "If other ecosystems are slow to adopt new signature schemes, or their contracts can’t migrate in time, NEAR Protocol and Intents contracts will achieve quantum safety in the medium term."
The Threat Landscape: How Close Is Quantum Computing?
To understand the strategic significance of NEAR’s upgrade, it’s essential to clarify the current trajectory of quantum threats.
Project Eleven’s "The Quantum Threat to Blockchains — 2026 Report," released in May 2026, offers the most systematic risk assessment framework to date. The report notes that once "cryptographically relevant quantum computers" (CRQC) emerge, Shor’s algorithm can quickly break asymmetric encryption systems like ECDSA and RSA. The report places the expected Q-Day between 2030 and 2033.
The same report quantifies the vulnerabilities of different public blockchains: about 65% of the Ethereum network faces quantum attack risks, with critical exposure points including validators’ BLS public keys and multiple cryptographic layers introduced by EIP-4844’s KZG commitments. Solana, whose address structure directly includes public key information, sees its Ed25519 system assessed as 100% quantum-vulnerable. Bitcoin’s UTXO model provides some buffer—the public keys of unspent addresses aren’t necessarily exposed until spent—but wallets with exposed public keys (such as early P2PK addresses and reused traditional addresses) remain at significant risk.
Coinbase’s Quantum Advisory Committee released a 50-page position paper in April 2026, further quantifying risk exposure: around 6.9 million bitcoins (about 32% of total supply) are stored in wallets whose public keys are already exposed on-chain, making them high-risk assets for quantum attacks. The paper also highlights that PoS networks, due to the additional exposure from validator signature mechanisms, face more complex quantum attack paths than pure payment networks.
For NEAR, this technical backdrop forms the logic behind its early adoption: while the industry debates upgrade roadmaps, first movers will hold a long-term advantage in the security narrative.
The Public Chain Quantum Resistance Race: Growing Divergence
NEAR is not the only player in the quantum resistance arena, but the pace and depth of responses vary significantly across blockchains.
The Bitcoin community is researching several quantum-resistant proposals, including the BIP-360 scheme introducing new output types like P2MR (Pay-to-Merkle-Root) and hash-based signature schemes such as SPHINCS+. However, there is no commitment to a comprehensive upgrade plan yet, with the greatest challenge being the governance complexity of coordinating a network-wide upgrade.
The Ethereum Foundation launched the "Post-Quantum Ethereum" website in March 2026, elevating quantum safety to its highest strategic priority and forming a dedicated quantum security team. Ethereum’s roadmap suggests Layer 1 upgrades could arrive around 2029, but full migration of the execution layer is expected to take even longer.
Solana’s developer teams, Anza and Firedancer, have proposed adopting Falcon-512 quantum-safe signatures and deployed related schemes on testnet. However, Project Eleven’s experimental data shows that implementing quantum-safe signatures on Solana reduces transaction throughput by about 90%, with post-quantum signatures being 20 to 40 times larger than current schemes. The trade-off between performance and security presents a particularly tough challenge for Solana.
Algorand stands out, having already implemented post-quantum Falcon signatures on its mainnet, making it an early mover in this field. Circle’s Arc blockchain has released a multi-stage roadmap covering the entire tech stack, planning to expand from selective signature support at mainnet launch to comprehensive upgrades for core infrastructure and validator authentication. Tron founder Justin Sun has stated that Tron plans to transition to a quantum-resistant network in 2026, with testnet launch in Q2 and mainnet rollout in Q3.
Comparison table of quantum resistance progress among mainstream public blockchains:
| Blockchain | Current Progress | Post-Quantum Scheme | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| NEAR | Protocol-level integration underway | FIPS-204 (ML-DSA) | Testnet Q2 2026 |
| Bitcoin | Research phase | BIP-360, SPHINCS+ | No confirmed timeline |
| Ethereum | Roadmap stage | Multiple schemes under evaluation | Layer 1 ~2029 |
| Solana | Testnet deployment | Falcon-512 | Mainnet timeline not announced |
| Algorand | Mainnet implemented | Falcon | Completed |
| Tron | Planning | Not disclosed | Testnet Q2 2026 |
NEAR’s differentiated advantage lies in its forward-thinking account model, which keeps migration costs relatively low, offers a streamlined post-quantum onboarding experience, and uniquely positions it to provide quantum-safe solutions for other ecosystems through cross-chain support.
However, this is a rapidly evolving field. The speed and effectiveness of each chain’s progress will continue to shift, and whether NEAR’s early lead translates into lasting competitiveness will depend on engineering validation through testnet and mainnet deployments.
Industry Impact Analysis: From Security Narratives to Valuation Logic
The adoption of post-quantum cryptography is not just a technical upgrade—it may fundamentally reshape the competitive logic of public blockchains.
First, security attributes are shifting from implicit assumptions to explicit competitive factors. Historically, trust in public blockchain security was built on protocol uptime and economic incentives, with cryptographic reliability taken as a given. The emergence of quantum threats breaks this implicit assumption—cryptographic security is no longer guaranteed by default. By proactively integrating post-quantum signature schemes, NEAR positions "quantum safety" as a branded differentiator, elevating security from a backend infrastructure concern to a user-facing feature.
Second, migration costs are becoming a core metric for evaluating blockchain technical debt. Bitcoin’s slow progress stems from the difficulty of coordinating network-wide consensus, Solana faces severe performance conflicts due to its high-throughput, low-latency design and the increased size of post-quantum signatures, and Ethereum’s multi-layer architecture means migration involves consensus, execution, and data availability. In contrast, NEAR’s architectural design gives it a first-mover advantage in this "crypto agility" race. Coinbase’s Quantum Advisory Committee’s position paper notes that post-quantum signatures are significantly larger than current schemes, impacting transaction speed and storage costs, and that decentralized upgrade coordination—where every wallet holder must eventually take action—has no precedent in traditional finance.
This analytical framework suggests that the future valuation logic of public blockchains may undergo structural changes: networks with verifiable migration paths, low migration costs, and clear timelines will enjoy a "security premium." Especially as institutional capital enters the crypto market, long-term security and upgradability are becoming increasingly important factors in investment decisions. This was reflected in the market response to NEAR’s announcement—its native token price rose, resonating with mainstream narratives around AI and quantum computing.
It’s also notable that NEAR is strengthening its AI narrative alongside its post-quantum upgrade. The combination of quantum safety and AI positioning gives NEAR a differentiated storyline in the Layer 1 competition, potentially enhancing its appeal to developers, enterprise clients, and long-term investors.
More broadly, the proliferation of post-quantum cryptography could spark a reassessment of cross-chain security value. Once NEAR’s cross-chain quantum-safe solution is live, users on slower-migrating chains may seek quantum-safe protection via NEAR’s Intents infrastructure. This "security radiation" effect could drive a new form of cross-chain value capture: networks with quantum-safe capabilities not only protect their own ecosystems, but also provide security infrastructure to others through interoperability, elevating their status in the crypto economy’s value chain. Of course, this scenario depends heavily on the progress of cross-chain engineering, user migration willingness, and the industry’s overall anxiety about quantum safety.
Conclusion
Post-quantum cryptography is transitioning from a specialized topic in cryptography circles to a foundational infrastructure competition in the crypto industry. NEAR Protocol’s FIPS-204 integration is more than a technical upgrade announcement—it’s a signal that the dimensions of public blockchain competition are expanding beyond performance (TPS), ecosystem (applications and users), and capital efficiency to generational upgrades in security infrastructure.
Quantum computing won’t break all blockchain private keys tomorrow, but it has already changed the rules of the game. For long-term participants in the crypto industry, the focus may not be on which blockchain upgrades "fastest," but on which architecture enables the most "elegant" adaptation to the new security paradigm—with minimal friction and continuous evolution, those networks will be best positioned for the next decade.
The race for quantum safety is just beginning. And this time, NEAR is already ahead.
