NEAR Protocol (NEAR) is establishing itself as the clear frontrunner in quantum-resistant blockchain infrastructure by launching live post-quantum signature support and partnering with institutions for quantum-safe custody. Investors can capitalize on NEAR's first-mover advantage as it expands its NEAR Intents technology to secure assets across more than 35 connected networks. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) investors should actively monitor governance proposals regarding 4 to 5 million vulnerable legacy coins that risk severe market disruption if left unmigrated against quantum computing advances. Both Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL) carry technical post-quantum trade-offs, with ETH risking reduced transaction throughput and SOL facing slower integration with hardware wallets. Across the digital asset ecosystem, prepare for a multi-year hardware refresh cycle that will drive demand for security providers like Ledger as they roll out next-generation, quantum-safe chips.

Bitcoin (BTC)

• Bitcoin faces long-term structural risks from quantum computing advancements, which could enable attackers to extract private keys from exposed public keys using algorithms like Shor's algorithm.
  • A significant risk involves an estimated 4 to 5 million unmigrated Bitcoins (including Satoshi Nakamoto's coins), which could be stolen and dumped on the open market if left unprotected.
  • Three potential solutions were outlined for dealing with inactive/unmigrated coins:
    • Do nothing: Exposes old coins to theft, potentially causing severe liquidity and price collapse.
    • Freeze the coins: Protects the network from theft and caps active supply at around 16 million BTC, but raises private property concerns.
    • Freeze and re-emit (tail emission): Re-allocate the unmigrated 4–5 million coins to the consensus reward pool to support long-term miner rewards and solve the network's security budget issue.
  • The Bitcoin developer community leans toward conservative hash-based cryptography (variants of SPHINX), which provides high security assumptions but results in larger transaction sizes and heavier computational requirements.

Takeaways

• Quantum readiness represents an existential governance and technical milestone for Bitcoin. Investors should monitor community debate regarding post-quantum upgrades and policy proposals for Satoshi-era and lost coins.

NEAR Protocol (NEAR)

• NEAR has deployed the first live mainnet post-quantum signature support on a major layer-1 blockchain using the NIST-standardized ML-DSA (lattice-based) algorithm.
  • The network's flexible account architecture separates accounts from cryptographic access keys, allowing rapid adoption of post-quantum curves without re-architecting the base chain.
  • Announced a pilot consortium with Safehorn, custodians, banks, and regulators to test post-quantum multi-party computation (MPC), facilitating institutional-grade custody.
  • Through NEAR Intents, NEAR enables users to manage and secure assets across 35+ connected blockchains from a post-quantum secured account.

Takeaways

• NEAR is positioning itself as an early frontrunner in quantum-resistant infrastructure and institutional cross-chain custody, reducing migration friction compared to single-cryptography chains.

Ledger

• Ledger has introduced post-quantum cryptographic primitives (ML-DSA for signatures and ML-KEM for encryption) into its operating system and SDK.
  • Current Ledger devices support post-quantum signatures via firmware updates, though with slower compute times because current secure elements lack native hardware acceleration for these algorithms.
  • Next-generation Ledger devices will feature upgraded secure elements with hardware-level support for lattice-based and hash-based signatures to improve speed and security guarantees.
  • Ledger intends to support multiple cryptographic standards (ML-DSA, Falcon, and hash-based schemes) to maintain compatibility across fragmented blockchain implementations.

Takeaways

• Hardware wallet infrastructure will require a hardware upgrade cycle over the coming years as native silicon support is rolled out for quantum-safe signatures.

Ethereum (ETH)

• The Ethereum community is leaning toward hash-based cryptographic algorithms (custom parameters of SPHINX) rather than lattice-based standards.
  • Hash-based approaches are chosen for their conservative security profile, but they create significantly larger signature sizes and heavier compute overhead, which may impact block size and throughput.
  • Hash-based schemes make implementing multi-party computation (MPC) much more technically difficult.

Takeaways

• Ethereum's post-quantum roadmap prioritizes proven security over signature efficiency, which will likely require protocol-level optimizations to maintain throughput and network performance.

Solana (SOL)

• Solana is exploring the Falcon algorithm (a lattice-based post-quantum signature scheme) to maintain low latency and fast processing speeds.
  • Falcon produces smaller signatures that minimize block propagation delays, aligning with Solana's high-speed design goals.
  • Falcon is not natively supported by next-generation secure element chips, which will require hardware wallets to run it at the slower firmware level.

Takeaways

• Solana continues to optimize for network speed and throughput in its post-quantum strategy, accepting trade-offs in hardware-level wallet integration compared to broader industry standards.