Solana has partnered with a security company to test quantum-resistant technology on a Solana testnet, claiming to offer a scalable end-to-end solution.
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The Solana Foundation announced a partnership with Project Eleven, a post-quantum crypto security company, to prepare Solana for the rise of quantum computing.
According to a Tuesday , Project Eleven led a full quantum computing threat assessment on Solana and prototyped a functioning Solana testnet using post-quantum digital signatures. The announcement claimed that its testnet implementation showed “end-to-end quantum-resistant transactions are practical and scalable.”
This is a notable claim, given that post-quantum cryptography is expected to be more computationally expensive than traditional alternatives. Solana had not responded to Cointelegraph’s request for comment by publication, including to questions about which post-quantum encryption standard the testnet in question uses.
The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) three post-quantum encryption standards in August 2024. Those standards are the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 203, 204, and 205.
In 2024, internet infrastructure giant Cloudflare FIPS 204 with Ed25519 (used by Solana) and RSA-2048. Tests found that FIPS 204 was nearly five times more expensive to sign but twice as fast to verify as Ed25519, while RSA-2048 is slower to sign than both and slightly faster to verify than FIPS 204.
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Solana Foundation’s vice president of technology, Matt Sorg, said the company’s “mission is to .” The same kind of preoccupation unites most, if not all, major crypto ecosystems.
The comment follows ’s recent statement that there is a 20% chance that . However, that timeline is not shared by all experts, with Adam Back, the cryptographer and cypherpunk cited in the Bitcoin () white paper, saying in November that Bitcoin is unlikely to face a quantum threat for .
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Still, Ethereum has had a relatively dynamic and quick developer response, which may help in reacting to the challenge.
In late November, James Check, founder and lead analyst at Bitcoin onchain analysis service Checkonchain, suggested that . He explained at the time that the technological problem of quantum resistance is largely solved, but Bitcoin’s governance would find the arising issues a challenging task.
More specifically, Check claimed that “there is no chance we come to consensus to freeze” Bitcoin that has not been moved to quantum-resistant addresses. Such a failure would result in a large amount of lost Bitcoin flooding the market, as old addresses that did not migrate would be compromised.
