Quantum-Safe / Post-Quantum Cryptography

MarketsandMarkets projects the global post-quantum cryptography market will grow from $0.42 billion in 2025 to $2.84 billion by 2030, a compound annual growth rate of 46.2%. The forecast is a third-party projection, not a guarantee, and timelines for quantum capability remain debated, though large infrastructure vendors have started publishing migration dates and quantum hardware companies are reporting rapid revenue growth off small bases. Among this week's developments, Vancouver-based Quantum Secure Encryption Corp. appointed Joseph Hall as Chief Intelligence Officer, adding more than 20 years of frontline cybersecurity and threat intelligence experience, with prior roles including Director of Threat Intel R&D at Infoblox and Principal Security Consultant at Fortinet; he will work with Chief Technology Officer Michael Massing, who previously led Dell SonicWall's Unified Threat Management business unit. QSE also announced grants of 350,000 stock options and 350,000 restricted share units to employees. Separately, Cloudflare announced plans to become a public certificate authority issuing post-quantum Merkle Tree Certificates with production issuance scheduled for the first quarter of 2027, IonQ reported second quarter 2026 revenue of $80.1 million, up 287% year over year, and raised its full-year 2026 revenue outlook to $450 million to $460 million, Akamai announced an $11.6 billion multi-year agreement with Anthropic to supply distributed AI infrastructure and cloud computing services over seven years, and Okta reported second quarter fiscal 2027 total revenue of $805 million, up 11%, guiding to fiscal 2027 revenue of $3.216 billion to $3.226 billion.

Deutsche Telekom AG and Cloudflare, Inc. announced a strategic partnership to strengthen the security and resilience of digital infrastructure for enterprises across Europe. Under the collaboration, Deutsche Telekom will expand its enterprise portfolio with Cloudflare's security and connectivity solutions, while the two companies directly interconnect their networks to give European organizations access to Cloudflare's global cloud platform combined with Deutsche Telekom's services. Deutsche Telekom's enterprise arm, T-Systems, will strengthen its enterprise portfolio with Cloudflare's connectivity cloud solutions across performance, reliability, and security, and Cloudflare will leverage Deutsche Telekom's established sales and service organization to serve enterprise customers across the European region. Deutsche Telekom will also train and certify its professionals on the Cloudflare platform so customers can receive support from a single provider, from consulting and implementation through ongoing operations and managed security services. Beyond the portfolio and channel partnership, the two companies intend to collaborate on new approaches to European security and digital sovereignty requirements, including the use of scalable advanced post-quantum cryptography.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has unveiled an architectural blueprint for Ethereum through 2030, saying the network will no longer be just a blockchain but a hybrid architecture that fuses the blockchain with modern cryptography. Buterin wrote in a post on X that this approach is the foundation for everything planned for Ethereum, starting with the fork after Hegota, an upgrade planned for next year that will likely be Ethereum's last regular fork before everything that follows involves recursive STARKs, formal automated verification, highly optimized consensus algorithms, and making all of it quantum-safe. Glamsterdam, the upgrade preceding Hegota, is expected to ship in the fourth quarter of 2026, after previously being expected to go live in the first half of 2026. Buterin also projected slot times of 4 to 8 seconds by 2030 and absolute finality of 8 to 32 seconds. The price of ETH traded near 2,700 dollars on Sunday, little changed over 24 hours.

The European Banking Authority, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority, and the European Securities and Markets Authority published a joint risk report on September 23, warning that quantum computers pose a serious risk to the cryptography protecting communications, transactions, databases, and blockchains. They said the threat could materialize sooner than the commercialization of quantum technology, and called on financial institutions and market participants to prepare for the rapid development of quantum computers. In crypto assets, ownership is proven through digital signatures using public and private keys, but future quantum computers could derive a private key from a public key and impersonate the owner to move assets. CoinDesk, citing data from CryptoQuant, reported that roughly 6.9 million bitcoins could be exposed to quantum attacks. The EU has already set out a plan to migrate to post-quantum cryptography, asking member states to begin the transition by the end of 2026 and aiming to protect high-risk sectors by the end of 2030 at the latest. On September 10, Eigen Labs published research showing that the key computational processing required for a quantum attack on the cryptography used by Bitcoin and Ethereum could be reduced by more than 50 percent in resource terms compared with previous estimates.

The processing cost for preparing quantum-resistant Bitcoin transactions has fallen to under $67, down from about $320, a reduction of roughly 79%, according to benchmark tests. The improvement follows the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge, which StarkWare launched together with Yukon Research and Eigen Labs on September 16, producing 62 accepted improvements covering the two computing tasks needed to prepare QSB transactions. The first QSB transaction was mined and confirmed on the blockchain on August 26, taking about 3,100 GPU hours on roughly 100 GPU machines and submitting the transaction through MARA's Slipstream service. Meanwhile, Avihu Levy, a researcher at StarkWare, published the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin design in April, describing it as a last-resort measure that uses hash-based protection without changing Bitcoin's consensus rules. StarkWare continues to back soft forks as the long-term answer for broad quantum protection.

Coinbase Global has introduced enterprise-scale, fixed-rate Bitcoin-backed loans using the Morpho protocol for on-chain lending, alongside a post-quantum security architecture designed to harden its Bitcoin custody against future quantum computing threats. The fixed-rate loans target institutional borrowers seeking predictable on-chain financing terms rather than variable-rate crypto credit arrangements. The company said the two initiatives are only one part of its broader crypto infrastructure push, feeding directly into its role as an infrastructure provider for institutional clients that want more predictable and security-focused crypto services. The early tell for investors will be whether Coinbase starts disclosing specific metrics around Morpho-based loan balances, institutional borrower adoption and quantum-ready custody features in upcoming quarterly updates, instead of leaving these initiatives as purely technical announcements.

Crypto exchange Coinbase revealed by September 22 that it is developing a crypto custody system capable of supporting any post-quantum signature scheme blockchains may adopt in the future, in preparation for the risk of quantum computers cracking encryption. Yehuda Lindell, the company's head of cryptography, explained this in a video interview with the Mara Foundation. The company is upgrading its current custody infrastructure, which uses multi-party computation, so that it can withstand attacks by quantum computers, and is also considering an alternative approach using specialized devices called hardware security modules in case a signature scheme is adopted that multi-party computation cannot handle. According to the Mara Foundation, the company protects roughly 250 billion dollars' worth of digital assets centered on this system. On July 23, Coinbase explained on its official blog that its current key management system, CoreKMS, protects about 99.9 percent of its custodied assets, and that it is also developing a quantum-resistant version, PQ-CoreKMS, with plans to build an automated infrastructure within one year that can securely sign while distributing keys across multiple locations. Over the following two to three years, it aims to develop multi-party computation that does not require generating a complete private key even for quantum-resistant signatures.

Rigetti Computing said in its latest technology update that the biggest challenge in its quantum roadmap is no longer adding more qubits but improving the performance of its flagship 108-qubit Cepheus system. During the second quarter of 2026 earnings call, management acknowledged that coherence time has become the primary bottleneck limiting two-qubit gate fidelity, even as Cepheus-1-108Q stands among only three generally available gate-based quantum computers with more than 100 qubits. The system currently operates with coherence times of roughly 25-30 microseconds, a level that constrains the reliability of quantum operations. Rigetti is directing engineering efforts toward chip redesigns, fabrication process improvements and new materials, including tantalum-capped superconducting contacts, and management expects these initiatives to gradually double or even triple coherence times over the next several years. In peer updates, Quantum Computing Inc. signed a three-year Framework Agreement with Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar covering quantum computing, sensing and communications, while IonQ secured an $8.18 million commercial agreement with Congruity360 to integrate quantum-safe networking into its enterprise data management platform.

Aviatrix announced Harvest and Decrypt Protection, which it calls the first post-quantum protection that encrypts data and simultaneously governs what a compromised workload can reach, delivering crypto-agile encryption and Communication Governance as one policy in software on the network enterprises already run. The offering arrives a month before federal civilian agencies must file post-quantum migration plans on October 22, and ahead of the 2029 full quantum-readiness roadmaps published by Google and Microsoft; Amazon Web Services publishes no equivalent target. Harvest Protection comes with five free policies to start, with no trial clock and no purchase required, and is free to start for existing Aviatrix customers, with the first five policies and five nodes free with no license and no time limit. Aviatrix said its patented High-Performance Encryption engine removes the throughput trade-off that causes most enterprises to leave cloud transit unprotected, citing one Fortune 5 customer running 400 gigabits per second fully encrypted in production at line rate, and that key establishment on the control plane uses the ML-KEM standard today, with hybrid ML-KEM on the data plane a fast-follow release. The company is working with global systems integrators and security services providers and collaborating with Microsoft on the Quantum Safe program as the network traffic and Harvest Now, Decrypt Later containment solution. Aviatrix also cited deadlines including Executive Order 14412, which sets December 31, 2030, for post-quantum key establishment and December 31, 2031, for digital signatures on high-value assets, and said enterprises can begin with a free Containment Assessment that returns a provisional Blast Radius and harvest exposure read in about five minutes.

Kevin O'Leary said Bitcoin will reach $1 million, but only if the crypto industry resolves the quantum-computing threat known as Q-Day, the point at which a quantum computer could forge the signatures securing every Bitcoin wallet. Speaking at Avalanche Summit, O'Leary said no such machine exists and estimates for when one arrives run from the early 2030s to never, but that the doubt alone is why large funds cap Bitcoin exposure near 3%, treating it as a sliver of gold rather than a core holding. He also reversed his Ethereum thesis, saying his eighteen-month-old view that owning Bitcoin and Ethereum captured 97% of crypto's upside did not pan out, and that he now expects entire industries to pick their own chain, with whichever blockchain the first major exchange adopts for tokenization seeing that token soar. The interview came after the SEC approved its Innovation Exemption for tokenized stocks last week and as ICE evaluates Avalanche as the settlement layer for the NYSE's in-development trading system. O'Leary frames crypto as becoming the twelfth sector of the S&P because it services the other eleven.

The National Cyber Security Agency, or NCSA, has unveiled its direction for driving Thailand's cybersecurity, moving to clear out technology debt and elevate organisations toward Cyber Resilience in order to counter threats in the AI era, while setting a goal of bringing government agencies and critical information infrastructure, or CII, to quantum technology readiness, or Quantum-Ready, by 2030. Air Vice Marshal Amorn Chomchoey, Secretary-General of the NCSA, said at an open talk stage hosted by OPEN-TEC, a technology knowledge hub under TCC Technology Group, that over the past 20 years IT systems were adopted rapidly without enough emphasis on security, resulting in Technology Debt, or accumulated vulnerabilities in legacy systems. The NCSA therefore proposed guidelines for raising cybersecurity through key principles, stressing that security must begin on day one of AI development, covering software and data use, model training, and post-deployment operations, alongside building Cyber Resilience that shifts from a prevention-only mindset to the ability to withstand, detect, respond to, and recover critical infrastructure systems such as energy, public health, transport, and financial services, as well as the Zero Trust principle, the Least Privilege principle, and public-private partnership. In addition, the NCSA has begun laying out guidelines to survey Cryptographic Libraries, upgrade Web Servers to support the TLS 1.3 standard, and plan a transition to quantum-resistant encryption systems, with the goal of bringing the public sector and key agencies to Quantum-Ready status by 2030. It is also organising the Thailand Cyber Top Talent activity to address the shortage of cybersecurity personnel and to exchange threat intelligence for early warning.

01 Quantum Inc reported cash usage of $450,000 for the quarter despite significantly ramped-up research and development and marketing spending, leaving it with approximately $2.5 million in cash and zero debt. Recurring revenue from partner royalties, including Hitachi, has begun accumulating and was described as growing slowly but surely, while the absence of one-time engineering fees that were collected in previous quarters weighed on revenue comparisons. The company received $22.5 million in qONE tokens plus a cash development fee for the qLABS Foundation quantum-safe crypto vault, and Chief Executive Andrew Cheung pegged the annual recurring revenue opportunity for its IronCAP XMail product at $2.6 billion, based on 10% of roughly 730 million business email addresses at $3 per month. Cheung said the AI marketplace is expected around the second quarter of 2027, and he cited an independent Carleton University evaluation confirming that the Quantum AI Wrapper performs AI inference in encrypted form at acceptable efficiency. He also said qLABS Foundation is preparing a Mythos Challenge that will load approximately $100,000 worth of qONE tokens into the qVAULT, publish the private key, and invite crypto hackers to breach it over 30 days.

Lattice Semiconductor announced the Lattice Mach-N2 FPGA family, extending its secure control FPGA leadership with devices built for system control and security in modern infrastructure. The family is built on the Lattice Nexus 2 small FPGA platform and combines integrated flash, a hardware Root of Trust, and CNSA 2.0-compliant post-quantum cryptography with crypto agility. Mach-N2 delivers up to 2X greater logic density for advanced system control functions, enhanced SERDES bandwidth for direct connectivity to modern System on Chips and processors, and up to 16 Gbps SERDES with PCIe 4.0 and 10G Ethernet. Its security suite includes ML-DSA, LMS, and XMSS for authentication, ML-KEM for key exchange, PUF-derived device identity with DICE and SPDM attestation, and classical cryptography including AES-256-GCM, ECC 521-bit, and RSA 4096-bit APIs. On-chip non-volatile flash blocks external access to the configuration bitstream and User Flash Memory, and a 220k system logic cell device fully configures in under 30 milliseconds, with up to three stored configuration images for fault recovery. Esam Elashmawi, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, said Mach-N2 represents a significant step forward in logic density and bandwidth while adding the most complete post-quantum security suite in its class for long-lifecycle systems.

Oracle introduced Java 27 with advanced post-quantum cryptography and ecosystem updates on 15 September 2026. The release includes Project Valhalla features and Helidon 27 support aimed at raising performance and developer productivity. Separately, Quorum Health selected Oracle Health's AI-driven platform as its standard for clinical and operational systems across its hospital network. Oracle said the combination pushes its AI story deeper into security-focused software and healthcare tools, and investors should watch for Java 27 uptake on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and measurable Quorum Health deployment milestones in coming earnings updates.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on September 10 published on X a technical proposal called EIP-8288 (Recursive STARK mempool) that would make quantum-resistant signatures and privacy features available at low cost. The proposal uses a mechanism called Recursive STARK to verify large numbers of signatures and proofs together, reducing the need to process large amounts of data directly on Ethereum, and is positioned as the next stage of Frame Transactions, the new transaction scheme he has proposed previously. Currently, quantum-resistant private transactions require about 10 million gas, but using EIP-8288 could bring this down to roughly tens of thousands of gas, a reduction of more than 99% by simple calculation. It would also make various types of cryptographic signatures and proofs easier to use, and is expected to lead to privacy features that allow transactions to be processed without disclosing their contents more than necessary. EIP-8288 is currently at the draft stage and its adoption has not been decided, and Buterin explained that he hopes it will be adopted in the future network upgrade I-star.

US blockchain company Eigen Labs published research on the paper preprint site arXiv on September 10 showing that the amount of computation needed to break ECDSA, the cryptographic scheme used by Bitcoin and Ethereum, with a quantum computer is less than previously assumed. The research team optimized the "point addition" operation, which is unavoidable in cryptographic cracking calculations, so that it can be executed with 1,151 logical qubits, the basic unit close to a quantum computer's working memory, and also held the number of "Toffoli gate" operations, among the heaviest computational loads, to about 1.3 million. The resource metric combining qubit count and operation count came in more than 50% lower than the circuit value presented in March 2026 by Google Quantum AI, Google's quantum computing division, but the two differ in calculation methods and conditions, and the paper states that it "does not prove superiority or inferiority and is limited to a numerical comparison." More than 100 humans and AI agents took part in this research starting in May 2026, and in June the verification mechanism and scoreboard were made public so that anyone could submit improvement proposals. However, no quantum computer exists that can actually run this circuit, and the number of logical qubits IBM aims for by 2029 is said to be only 200.

XRP Ledger (XRPL) developers have joined the global technology race, officially aiming to make the ledger fully quantum-resistant by 2028. According to Vet, an XRPL Foundation contributor and validator on the decentralized Unique Node List (dUNL), major progress and the launch of a hybrid deployment of new security protocols are expected as early as 2027.

IonQ Chairman and CEO Niccolo de Masi said on CNBC that a 2,000-qubit quantum computer could break Bitcoin's elliptic-curve encryption in under 26 days, reiterating his expectation for "Q-Day" in 2028. He noted the capability "is not here yet" but argued the timeline is compressing, citing a four-order-of-magnitude drop in qubits needed to break encryption over the past 15 years. IonQ is accelerating its path to 10,000 qubits in 2027 and plans to commission 256-qubit systems that year, after reporting Q2 revenue of $80.1 million, up 287% year over year, with full-year 2026 guidance of $280 million to $290 million. De Masi acknowledged IonQ's dual role as a quantum security solution provider, having launched the ClavisXG Multiplex QKD product, while Bitcoin traded near $79,530 and Strategy resumed buying with a $370 million purchase. IonQ shares last traded at $39.17, down 11.84% over the past month.

IonQ used its 2026 Investor Day to unveil its Superion quantum-computing roadmap and detail its growth strategy following the SkyWater merger, reaffirming standalone 2026 revenue guidance of $280 million–$290 million and projecting combined 2026 revenue of $450 million–$460 million, which includes SkyWater's expected contribution of $240 million for the five months of ownership in 2026 after eliminating $70 million of intercompany revenue. The company expects initial Superion 256 systems to begin deploying at customer sites in early 2027, with a design that replaces laser-based qubit control with electronics integrated into the chip, called Electronic Qubit Control, to simplify manufacturing and support data-center deployment. SkyWater is already producing Superion chips by the wafer and will support dedicated photonics and superconducting quantum foundry platforms, with SkyWater CEO Thomas Sonderman noting thousands of quantum wafers running through its fabrication operations, about one-third tied to IonQ, and nine quantum customers following the announcement of Qolab as a customer. IonQ also announced a major agreement with Congruity360 for an enterprise rollout of quantum security in the U.S., described as the largest deal of its kind in the country, and highlighted progress in networking and sensing, including a photonic quantum interconnect exceeding one kilohertz and a hybrid quantum-classical workflow using synthetic aperture radar data.

The protocol subgroup of the Ethereum Foundation has published a priority list for 62 Ethereum improvement proposals for the upcoming Hegotá upgrade, aiming for quantum technology resistance by December 2029, with two S-tier proposals that must be delivered: FOCIL (EIP-7805) in the consensus layer, which will enhance censorship resistance, and Frame Transactions (EIP-8141) in the execution layer, which will make Account Abstraction a native feature of Ethereum, preparing for the post-quantum era. A-tier proposals will be bundled with the main ones, while 28 proposals were rejected for inclusion in the upgrade. The EF Protocol group has also set a "north star" for Ethereum L1 to be quantum-resistant across all three layers by December 2029, aligning with the goals of Google, Cloudflare, and Microsoft, assuming that Q-day could occur as early as 2030, and the 2029 deadline will be treated as a non-negotiable commitment until January 2027. Achieving this goal requires an average cadence of 7.2 months per fork, starting with the delivery of Glamsterdam in Q4 2026, and forks will overlap, with Hegotá being delivered while the specifications for I* are maturing, and research for J* through L* must proceed in parallel.

Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder and CEO of blockchain development firm StarkWare, warned in an X post on August 27 that following the first quantum-resistant transaction on Bitcoin, preparations for the threat of quantum computers are "far from sufficient." If a sufficiently powerful quantum computer becomes practical, the current signature scheme used in Bitcoin could be at risk of having private keys derived from public keys. Ben-Sasson emphasized that this achievement does not mean Bitcoin is adequately protected against quantum threats, and stressed the need for serious measures, including a soft fork, to avoid a catastrophe, saying "there is still time." StarkWare develops Ethereum layer-2 solutions such as Starknet, and according to official information, has a team of about 220 people and has raised $250 million (approximately 40 billion yen, at an exchange rate of 160 yen per dollar). On August 26, the company announced that the first Bitcoin transaction resistant to quantum computer attacks was successfully executed on the mainnet. The method used, called "Quantum Safe Bitcoin (QSB)," was proposed by the company's Avihu Levy in April, and it enables quantum-resistant transactions without changing Bitcoin's consensus rules. This was the first instance of such a transaction on the mainnet. However, QSB does not make Bitcoin itself quantum-resistant, and StarkWare also indicated that while this success applies to a specific transaction, a soft fork would be more desirable in the long term.

Investment bank Bernstein released a major report forecasting Bitcoin's rise to $150,000 by mid-2027 and $300,000 by 2029, driven by the sovereign debt crisis and institutional demand. The report highlights that reaching the higher target is contingent on solving quantum computing threats to Bitcoin's cryptography. Bernstein's analysts emphasize that institutional adoption and macroeconomic factors will fuel the rally, but the quantum problem remains a critical risk. The forecast underscores growing confidence in Bitcoin as a hedge against fiat currency devaluation.

Quantum X Labs Inc. has announced the launch of Qatacomb, a new research initiative through its QuantumQ Security operation to explore quantum-native approaches to protecting sensitive information. The program will investigate security architectures that combine efficient access for authorized users with security properties rooted in quantum physics, and will include theoretical validation, simulation, and proof-of-concept testing on quantum hardware. The company cites a growing strategic need as quantum computing reshapes cybersecurity, with the global quantum security market projected to grow from approximately $2.5 billion in 2026 to approximately $9.8 billion by 2030, a compound annual growth rate of about 40%. Prof. Nir Sharon, Chief Technology Scientist, emphasized the goal of making quantum physics an integral part of the protection architecture itself. The initiative expands Quantum X Labs' research into quantum security, complementing its work in quantum computing, software, simulation, and sensing.

Ethereum's developer team submitted a new deposit contract proposal to the EIP repository on GitHub on the 24th, designed to prepare for the risk of signature decryption by future quantum computers. The proposal is registered under the provisional number EIP9999 and adopts a mechanism that specifies a scheme identifier for each deposit, with a design capable of handling variable-length public keys and authentication information. The contract's state is managed in three stages: inactive, active, and deprecated, and in the final stage it unilaterally stops accepting new BLS-based registrations. The proposal is in draft stage, and the formal EIP number and implementation schedule are undecided.

Banks and financial regulators in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have joined a pilot project to test quantum-resistant infrastructure for digital asset wallets and blockchain transfers. The Responsible Fintech Institution, or RFI, and Safeheron, a crypto custody infrastructure provider, announced the project on Monday. It uses a multi-party computation protocol supporting ML-DSA-65, a post-quantum digital signature standard published by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, on the quantum-resistant NEAR test network. Participating regulators include Abu Dhabi Global Market, Bhutan's Gelephu Financial Services Authority, and the Malta Financial Services Authority, while Bison Bank and DK Bank joined as financial institutions. The banks will test wallet creation and transfers in a shared application environment, while regulators will observe in the first phase and join regulatory workstreams later. Organizers plan to publish a white paper covering the research, protocol design, and test results, and will eventually open-source the underlying technology. The pilot comes as financial regulators prepare for quantum computers that could break public-key cryptography. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority aims to make Hong Kong's banking sector fully prepared for quantum-related security risks by 2030, while a 2025 Bank for International Settlements report urged financial institutions to begin migrating to post-quantum innovations in a coordinated and phased manner.

BTQ Technologies Corp announced key milestones across its quantum-safe portfolio during its first quarter 2026 earnings call, including sending final design files for its QSIM chip to manufacturing partner ICTK with tape-out scheduled for August 2026 and first silicon samples expected in Q1 2027. The QSIM product achieved a record-low footprint of less than 100,000 logic gate equivalents for core post-quantum algorithms, four times smaller than the nearest open-source side-channel protected PQC engine. The company's QSSN was selected as the core post-quantum security infrastructure for Korea's first bank-led Korean Won stablecoin pilot, and its Denel pilot processed thousands of transactions with a 100% success rate and 0% fallback rate. Bitcoin Quantum, the quantum-safe Bitcoin fork, is on track for a mid-2026 mainnet launch with over 350,000 blocks mined and more than 150 open-source contributors. BTQ reported $12 million in liquidity and noted regulatory tailwinds from the upcoming CNSA 2.0 standard and EU Cyber Resilience Act, while acknowledging uncertainty around mass commercialization timelines and potential dilution from its base shelf.

Allot Ltd. announced it is a founding member and Chair of a new Post-Quantum Communications Consortium dedicated to developing technologies that will secure communications networks and protect data against future quantum computing threats. Supported by the Israel Innovation Authority's Technological Infrastructure Division, the consortium includes Allot, Ceragon, Classiq, Gilat Satellite Networks, Heqa, Elta, NVIDIA, RAD, and Ribbon, along with academic partners Bar-Ilan University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, The Open University of Israel, the Technion, and the University of Haifa. The consortium will develop and evaluate technologies based on Post-Quantum Cryptography, Quantum Key Distribution, and hybrid approaches, addressing multiple network layers including optical, Ethernet, IP, mobile, satellite, data center, and internet-based communications. Dr. Yaakov Stein, VP CTO of Allot and Chair of the Consortium Board, said the transition to quantum-safe communications is one of the most important cybersecurity challenges facing the world today.

Advances in quantum computing from Google and IBM are bringing the Q-Day threat to Bitcoin closer to reality, with the potential to crack high-risk wallets worth more than 452 billion dollars. A Google white paper in March 2026 indicated that quantum computers could break encryption systems faster than expected, while security researcher Justin Drake estimates a 10 percent chance that private keys could be recovered from exposed public keys by 2032. Italian researcher Giancarlo Lelli successfully cracked a weakened elliptic curve key in April 2026, and the U.S. government announced a 2 billion dollar investment to develop quantum technology in May 2026. Several BIP proposals, such as BIP-360 and BIP-361, have been put forward to prepare the network, but upgrades take a long time and require community consensus, while abandoned coins worth around 180 billion dollars, including roughly 1 million Satoshi-era Bitcoin, remain at high risk.

The Ethereum Foundation is stepping back from using the Poseidon hash function in its planned post-quantum architecture, according to Justin Drake, a researcher at the foundation, turning instead to widely accepted and robust alternatives such as SHA or BLAKE. Drake said advances in SNARKs technology have made traditional hash functions efficient enough to replace Poseidon in those planned systems, with a production-ready leanVM targeted for 2027, followed by deployment across Ethereum's consensus layer, data layer, and execution layer in 2028. Sreeram Kannan, founder and chief executive officer of Eigen Labs, said systems based on established hash functions have fewer potential attack vectors than other post-quantum approaches and can be adopted more quickly because they have been thoroughly scrutinized for many years.

Vitalik Buterin has unveiled a new Ethereum roadmap aimed at preparing for the era of quantum computing and AI, with a focus on privacy as a core feature. The roadmap includes native rollups, Verkle trees, STARKs, and post-quantum technologies to enhance network efficiency and security. This announcement marks a significant step in modernizing Ethereum to meet future technological challenges.

Christopher Smith, founder of Quantus Network, warns that the first quantum attack on cryptocurrencies could occur without any trace of a breach, making it extremely difficult to detect. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could compute private keys from public keys visible on the blockchain without needing to penetrate the internal systems of wallets or exchanges. Smith estimates a 50-50 chance of this happening by 2028, while researchers at Blockchain Capital view the early 2030s as almost certain. The first target may not be Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin, but rather Tether's token minting keys or exchange hot wallets, which would trigger fewer alarms. Advances in quantum algorithms and AI are accelerating the timeline for transitioning to a post-quantum era, with Google projecting this by 2029.

US lawmakers from both parties are seeking to increase annual military spending on quantum computing by 68% to $567 million as part of defense funding legislation expected to be debated in the House later this year. A similar effort is underway in the Senate, building on Trump administration moves including a May announcement of more than $2 billion in direct federal investments and a June executive order to advance quantum research and protect federal IT systems from quantum-based cyberattacks. The push comes as China has established a $10 billion National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences, while Europe and the UK combined have committed nearly three times as much public money as the US, according to industry consultancy QBN. Despite recent breakthroughs, investor skepticism persists, with shares of pure-play quantum firms like D-Wave Quantum Inc., Infleqtion Inc., and Rigetti Computing Inc. falling sharply this year, though IonQ Inc. raised its full-year revenue forecast and recouped most losses after closing its $1.8 billion acquisition of SkyWater Technology Inc. The four pure-play quantum companies slated for Commerce Department grants have doubled their annual lobbying spending to $2.2 million, and the White House in July hosted a quantum tech summit with industry leaders.

Sui is integrating two NIST-approved quantum-resistant signature schemes to protect blockchain accounts from the threat of quantum computers. The network will add ML-DSA-65 as a native protocol signature for general accounts, and the hash-based SLH-DSA-SHA2-128s inside Move smart contracts for high-value vaults. Users can migrate to quantum-safe keys using their original recovery phrase without creating a new account. Quantum-safe vaults are targeted for mainnet this year, while native ML-DSA-65 accounts are planned for testnet by the end of 2026 and mainnet in the first quarter of 2027.