post-quantum

Anthropic announced that the Claude Mythos Preview model has made breakthroughs in cryptographic research, discovering improved attack methods against the post-quantum digital signature candidate HAWK. HAWK is a post-quantum signature candidate solicited by NIST to combat quantum computer attacks, which has already passed two rounds of expert review. However, Claude reduced the effective key strength of HAWK-256 from 2^64 to 2^38 in just 60 hours, significantly lowering the theoretical cost of cracking. HAWK has not yet been deployed in practice, and this attack currently does not affect any production systems.Claude also discovered an improved attack against 7-round AES, achieving a speed increase of 200 to 800 times. During the research process, Claude independently completed literature reviews, mathematical reasoning, and experimental validation with limited guidance from cryptographers. The HAWK attack took about 60 hours and had an API cost of approximately $100,000; the AES attack was completed independently by Claude, which generated about 1 billion tokens before proposing core innovative ideas. Anthropic researchers then spent hundreds of hours validating the results. Anthropic stated that AI models can now help identify significant flaws in cryptographic algorithms, and the cryptography community may face bottlenecks similar to those in the software vulnerability field—AI-generated research results far exceed human verification capabilities. Anthropic has collaborated with academic institutions to launch the CryptanalysisBench benchmark and coordinated disclosures with NIST authors and government partners. The research team has achieved preliminary results on algorithms such as LEA and Serpent-128. Anthropic warns that as AI capabilities improve, actual attacks against deployed systems may be discovered in the future, necessitating the establishment of response mechanisms in advance.

According to the official announcement from NEAR Chain Status, the NEAR mainnet version 2.13.0 has been released, introducing post-quantum transaction signature schemes and dynamic sharding features.Voting will begin at 8:00 AM Beijing time on July 20. Former NEAR core developer Vadim introduced that this upgrade includes features that would typically require a ten-year roadmap for most blockchains: the post-quantum signature ML-DSA-65 becomes the third key type in the protocol after ed25519 and secp256k1, allowing accounts to hold keys that cannot be forged by quantum computers, with only a 32-byte hash recorded on-chain; dynamic sharding enables the chain to automatically monitor the status and size of each shard and to split and re-shard at epoch boundaries without the need for protocol upgrades or manual intervention; Gas Keys provide critical functionality for the proxy economy, allowing a single account to run a batch of proxies to send transactions simultaneously without nonce conflicts.

According to PR Newswire, QIZ Security announced the completion of a $17 million seed round financing, led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Merlin Ventures, with participation from Evolution Equity Partners, Qbeat Ventures, Singtel Innov8, Qino Cyber Capital, and others.The company positions itself as a management platform for crypto assets and post-quantum cryptography (PQC), providing continuous crypto asset discovery, risk modeling, and governance, helping large clients in finance, telecommunications, healthcare, and critical infrastructure achieve "crypto agility" to address the risk of "Q-Day," when quantum computing capable of breaking existing encryption systems may emerge as early as 2029, and collaborates with Cisco, AWS, Google, CrowdStrike, Deloitte, EY, IBM, and others to promote enterprise quantum security migration planning.

According to Cointelegraph, StarkWare has released the Starknet post-quantum roadmap, stating that the roadmap is divided into three phases to address the risks of future quantum computing attacks.The first phase of the roadmap includes replacing some existing security mathematical mechanisms, specifically the Pedersen hash, with post-quantum versions and adding post-quantum signatures; the second phase focuses on migration tools that upgrade existing smart contracts without requiring developers to manually rebuild applications; the third phase involves dependencies that Starknet cannot resolve on its own, primarily relying on Ethereum's quantum upgrade roadmap.

On Monday, U.S. President Trump signed two executive orders aimed at accelerating the development of U.S. quantum computing capabilities and advancing the government's transition to post-quantum cryptography. Although the executive orders did not directly mention Bitcoin, industry insiders believe this could benefit the blockchain's post-quantum security research and development.The two executive orders focus on defending against advanced cryptographic attacks and promoting cutting-edge quantum innovation. They include a clear timeline: to advance the construction of quantum sensors by September 2028 and require federal high-value assets and high-impact systems to complete the transition to post-quantum cryptography by the end of 2031. Project Eleven CEO Alex Pruden stated that this means the U.S. government will invest time and resources to achieve post-quantum security goals and may extend related requirements to the entire federal contractor system, not just limited to government agencies, thereby accelerating the implementation of post-quantum cryptographic technology.At the time of this policy announcement, the blockchain industry’s concern about quantum threats continues to rise. Organizations like the Ethereum Foundation and the Solana Foundation have begun advancing post-quantum security research and development, while the Bitcoin community is also discussing potential risks. Some publicly exposed Bitcoin addresses are believed to face the risk of private keys being derived once powerful quantum computers emerge in the future. Pruden pointed out that this executive order clearly sets the deadline for adopting post-quantum cryptography as 2031, which is more binding than the previous guidance from the U.S. government that proposed phasing out traditional cryptographic systems by 2035. For Bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency industry, government investment in post-quantum security may accelerate the maturity of related tools, standards, and migration paths.

According to The Defiant, Ethereum researchers Thomas Coratger, Justin Drake, and others released a proposal on June 1 at the Ethereum research forum, planning to establish a dedicated XMSS public key registry as the first concrete protocol upgrade for Ethereum's migration to post-quantum cryptography.This registry allows approximately 1 million validators to pre-register quantum-safe XMSS keys before the full switch to the BLS signature system, serving as an important "preheating phase" to reduce the impact of the subsequent switch on network stability. This proposal has been included in the Ethereum Foundation's protocol team's Strawmap roadmap, marking the first protocol fork on that roadmap.

Circle released the "Post-Quantum Security White Paper," proposing a phased post-quantum resilience roadmap focused on the long-term security of the Arc blockchain ecosystem.The roadmap covers multiple technical directions, including quantum secure signatures, private execution environments, validator hardening, infrastructure migration, and account recovery, applicable to core components such as the Arc network, USDC, smart contracts, and validators.Circle stated that it plans to provide post-quantum signature support when the Arc mainnet launches (in 2026) to enhance the ecosystem's ability to respond to future quantum computing threats.

NEAR Protocol stated on platform X that the team is adding post-quantum cryptography support for the network. NEAR's account model is different from Bitcoin and Ethereum; accounts are decoupled from cryptography and controlled through rotatable access keys.The NEAR One team is adding the NIST-approved lattice-based signature FIPS-204 scheme as the first post-quantum signature option. Once launched, any NEAR account holder can rotate keys through a single transaction, achieving quantum safety. NEAR is also collaborating with software and hardware wallets to advance post-quantum support.Through the chain signature feature, NEAR can provide threshold signatures for over 35 chains. The NEAR Intents team is developing a quantum-safe cross-chain signature solution. If other chains progress slowly in adopting post-quantum cryptography, NEAR can offer a quantum-safe environment. Aspects such as consensus mechanisms, validators, block synchronization, and transaction signatures also need to evolve for the post-quantum era, with the goal of achieving a one-time future-compatible migration.

According to the Korea Economic Daily, the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb has announced that it will introduce post-quantum cryptography (PQC) technology to guard against the risk of future quantum computers potentially breaking existing encryption systems.Bithumb plans to comprehensively apply PQC technology from virtual asset wallet management to identity authentication systems, focusing on protecting customer private keys, and will collaborate with security technology company ATON to encrypt various stages of data processing, including input, authentication, transmission, and storage. Additionally, Bithumb will strengthen its real-time monitoring system to detect new types of hacker attacks and abnormal trading patterns that utilize quantum computers.

The Zcash core development team Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) founder Josh Swihart released the latest progress on Zcash, proposing a strategic direction centered on "post-quantum security, scalability, and user experience," and using the Artemis II lunar mission as a metaphor to emphasize achieving seemingly impossible goals through technological breakthroughs. The ZODL team stated that Zcash is entering the "Zcash IV" phase, which will build infrastructure similar to a "lunar base" to support the protocol and application security scaling to billions of users, while promoting the vision of privacy transactions without large-scale financial surveillance.On the product and technology front, ZODL continues to iterate, with its 3.3.x version now launched on iOS and Android, adding hardware wallet connection management, SDK upgrades, and multiple experience optimizations, while advancing key developments such as Keystone wallet functionality and address system upgrades (ZIP 316, UIVK/UFVK). Meanwhile, the Zcash core team has fixed multiple system issues and is advancing the development of the Zallet alpha version, while strengthening unified address standards and wallet interaction experiences, laying the groundwork for future scalability and performance improvements.In addition, ZODL disclosed that its application data continues to grow and participated in a stablecoin privacy summit to strengthen industry collaboration. However, due to upgrades in regulation and network restrictions, ZODL has temporarily removed its app from the Russian app store. The team emphasized that privacy is not an option but a fundamental need in the digital age, and will continue to accelerate delivery pace to promote the popularization of ZEC and ecological development in the future.

According to the official blog, Circle's institutional-grade blockchain Arc has released a phased upgrade roadmap for post-quantum cryptography (PQ), planning to introduce post-quantum signature schemes at the launch of the mainnet, gradually covering full-stack layers such as private state protection, infrastructure hardening, and validator authentication.The Arc mainnet will support post-quantum signatures from the outset, using an opt-in mechanism that does not require mandatory migration or a full network reset, allowing users to independently create wallets with long-term security. The recent goal is to extend quantum resistance to the private virtual machine (VM) layer, protecting private balances, private transactions, and private payees, with public keys additionally encapsulated in a symmetric encryption layer under privacy mode.The mid-term plan is to advance the upgrade of the infrastructure layer, aligning with industry standards such as TLS 1.3, covering access control, cloud environments, and hardware security modules (HSM). The long-term goal is to complete the hardening of validator signatures. Given that Arc's block finalization time is less than 1 second, the current assessment considers the risk of quantum attacks in this phase to be relatively limited, and it will be steadily advanced after the post-quantum consensus toolchain matures.Circle also warns that attackers may adopt a "collect now, decrypt later" strategy, and institutions should plan their cryptographic migration paths as early as possible.

According to Cointelegraph, Google has set 2029 as the deadline for its post-quantum cryptography migration, warning that the threat of quantum computing may arrive sooner than expected.Google stated that the rapid advancements in quantum computing hardware and quantum error correction, along with updates to the timeline for quantum computers to break current encryption standards, have heightened the urgency for action. This is the first time Google has set a timeline for the deployment of post-quantum capabilities in its products, ahead of some industry predictions for "Q-Day." Google is developing its quantum chip Willow, which has 105 qubits and is one of the most powerful quantum processors currently available.

The Ethereum Foundation has announced the launch of a post-quantum security resource platform to centrally showcase Ethereum's research progress and roadmap in the direction of post-quantum security.The project is led by the post-quantum team and the cryptography team, and is promoted in collaboration with the protocol architecture and coordination teams. Relevant research has been ongoing for over 8 years. The platform covers the impact of post-quantum on various protocol layers, a complete roadmap, open-source code, and specifications. Currently, more than 10 client teams are participating in related development network testing.

According to Coindesk, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) is transforming its long-standing post-quantum research into a public engineering initiative, forming a dedicated post-quantum team and prioritizing this work as a strategic priority for the Ethereum network.Ethereum Foundation (EF) researcher Justin Drake stated that the newly established team will be led by Thomas Coratger, with support from leanVM cryptographer Emile. Researcher Justin Drake mentioned that Ethereum is shifting from background research to active engineering practices, including bi-weekly developer meetings on post-quantum transactions and building a multi-client post-quantum consensus test network.

ChainCatcher news, the SEC has officially designated the Naoris Protocol as a reference model for the financial industry's transition to post-quantum cryptography in the "Post-Quantum Financial Infrastructure Framework" (PQFIF). This strategic document submitted to the U.S. Crypto Assets Working Group places the Naoris Protocol at the core of U.S. cybersecurity regulatory priorities.This strategic document is released against the backdrop of the rise of quantum computers, which pose an existential threat to the protection of digital assets: by 2034, the probability of quantum computers related to cryptography breaking the RSA-2048 algorithm is between 17% and 34%, threatening trillions of dollars in digital assets. The "Post-Quantum Financial Infrastructure Framework" references Naoris three times. The Naoris Protocol stands out with its "Sub-Zero Layer" architecture, which allows the integration of post-quantum cryptography into existing EVM blockchains without the need for hard forks or interruptions. Its approach employs NIST-approved algorithms (ML-KEM, ML-DSA, SLH-DSA) to secure blockchain infrastructure.

ChainCatcher news, the research organization ZKnox, supported by the Ethereum Foundation, has been officially established to enhance the security and efficiency of Ethereum. ZKnox focuses on post-quantum cryptography and has optimized the implementation of Number Theoretic Transform (NTT) to improve the computational efficiency of post-quantum signature verification.

ChainCatcher news, according to Hong Kong media Ming Pao, the Vice Chairman of the Asian Financial Technology Association and a part-time lecturer at the University of Hong Kong's School of Professional and Continuing Education, Chan Wing-fung, stated that asset tokenization has become the hottest application of blockchain in the financial industry. The use of "post-quantum cryptography (PQC)" technology can maintain and even enhance the security of blockchain. Recently, a fintech startup in Hong Kong also announced plans to issue the world's first post-quantum stablecoin, using post-quantum encryption technology to protect transactions and assets. This stablecoin is pegged to the US dollar at a 1:1 ratio and uses post-quantum encryption algorithms to ensure transaction security.