A group of nine blockchain organizations has formed the Quantum Alliance to develop open standards for assessing quantum readiness across blockchain networks, wallets and infrastructure.
The alliance launched Thursday with contributors from Quantus, American Fortress, Intmax, Keystone, Midnight Foundation, Postquant Labs, Abelian, The Vault and Hacken. It will publish its work openly, allowing projects and independent observers to evaluate implementations against the same criteria.
The group seeks to address the absence of industry-wide standards for verifying whether blockchain systems are resistant to quantum attacks.
Most crypto networks continue to rely on elliptic-curve signatures, which could be broken by sufficiently powerful quantum computers. The announcement estimates that about 6 million BTC, representing more than 30% of the total supply, is quantum-exposed at rest. Almost the entire $2.9 trillion crypto market also relies on classical signatures.
In addition, recent research has reduced estimates of the computing resources needed to attack existing cryptography, while some forecasts suggest practical quantum threats could emerge around 2028 or 2029.
“In the future, ‘post-quantum cryptography’ will just be called ‘cryptography’ and everything else will be in a museum,” Christopher Smith, founder and CEO of Quantus says. “Our intention with the Quantum Alliance is to front-load a lot of the complex decision-making when making post-quantum blockchain products and create standards that others can simply pull off the shelf as the industry migrates.”
The alliance will organize its work into four groups focused on blockchain migration, post-quantum zero-knowledge systems, wallet security and cross-chain compatibility.
The migration group will examine how networks can move existing funds and keys to new cryptographic schemes, including assets linked to exposed public keys or inaccessible accounts.
The zero-knowledge group will focus on the security, performance and size trade-offs of post-quantum proof systems, while the wallet group will develop specifications for key generation, storage, signing and recovery.
“Zero-knowledge systems carry some of the most sensitive data on any chain, and their security assumptions have to survive the same transition as signatures,” Sebastien Guillemot, CTO of Midnight Foundation, explains. “Agreeing on how to evaluate post-quantum proof systems now saves every team from solving it alone later.”
The fourth group, the cross-chain group, will address interoperability by establishing compatibility standards for wallets, bridges and hardware signers, as transactions spanning multiple networks can remain vulnerable if even one network has weaker protections.
The initiative will follow an open process modeled on the Internet Engineering Task Force, with proposals assessed through public evidence, rough consensus and working implementations.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Vivian Nguyen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.