Solana tests quantum-resistant transactions in new Project Eleven pilot

The Solana Foundation has 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 announcement, Project Eleven led a full quantum computing threat assessment on Solana and prototyped a functioning Solana testnet using post-quantum digital signatures. The announcement claims that its testnet implementation showed “end-to-end quantum-resistant transactions are practical and scalable.”

This is a notable claim, given post-quantum cryptography is often expected to be significantly 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) endorsed 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 compared 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.

Related: What happens to Satoshi’s 1M Bitcoin if quantum computers go live?

Preparing for a future threat

Solana Foundation’s vice president of technology Matt Sorg said the company’s “mission is to protect the world’s digital assets from quantum risk.” The same kind of preoccupation unites most, if not all, major crypto ecosystems.

The comment follows Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s recent statement that there is a 20% chance that quantum computers could break current cryptography before 2030. However, that timeline is not a belief shared by all experts, with Adam Back, the cryptographer and cypherpunk cited in the Bitcoin (BTC) white paper, saying in November that Bitcoin is unlikely to face a quantum threat for another 20 to 40 years.

Related: ‘We should migrate now’ to post-quantum encryption, researcher says

Still, Ethereum has a relatively dynamic and quick developer response, which helps with reacting to such a challenge. In late November, James Check, founder and lead analyst at Bitcoin onchain analysis service Checkonchain, suggested that this is not the case for Bitcoin.

He explained at the time that the technological problem of quantum resistance is largely solved, but Bitcoin’s governance will find solving the arising issues a challenging task. More specifically, Check claimed that “there is no chance we come to consensus to freeze” Bitcoin that is not 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 are compromised.