Quantum security is moving from theory to practice as layer-1 blockchains prepare long-term plans to adopt post-quantum cryptography. Quantum computers still look like lab toys: Racks of hardware, error-prone qubits and almost no real-world applications. Yet if you check the roadmaps of major layer-1 blockchains, a new priority now sits next to scaling and modularity: post-quantum security.The concern is simple even if the math isn’t. Most major blockchains rely on elliptic-curve signatures (ECDSA and Ed25519) to prove that a transaction came from the owner of a private key. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm could, in theory, recover those private keys from their public counterparts and let an attacker sign fake transactions.Read more Quantum security is moving from theory to practice as layer-1 blockchains prepare long-term plans to adopt post-quantum cryptography. Quantum computers still look like lab toys: Racks of hardware, error-prone qubits and almost no real-world applications. Yet if you check the roadmaps of major layer-1 blockchains, a new priority now sits next to scaling and modularity: post-quantum security.The concern is simple even if the math isn’t. Most major blockchains rely on elliptic-curve signatures (ECDSA and Ed25519) to prove that a transaction came from the owner of a private key. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm could, in theory, recover those private keys from their public counterparts and let an attacker sign fake transactions.Read more