Sui has added two NIST-approved post-quantum signature schemes to its blockchain roadmap as it prepares optional quantum-safe accounts and vaults for future network upgrades.
Summary
- Sui plans to add two NIST approved post quantum signature schemes for accounts and smart contract vaults.
- Existing recovery phrases and wallet addresses can be retained when users move to quantum safe authentication.
- Quantum safe vaults are targeted for mainnet this year, with native accounts planned for testnet by the end of 2026.
- ML DSA 65 and SLH DSA are designed to protect different types of assets using separate cryptographic approaches.
- The announcement follows similar post quantum security work across Bitcoin custody, BNB Chain and other blockchain projects.
According to Sui’s latest announcement, the blockchain plans to introduce ML-DSA-65 as a native signature scheme for regular accounts and SLH-DSA-SHA2-128s for high-value smart contract vaults, giving users an optional way to protect accounts against future quantum computing risks without replacing their recovery phrases or moving assets.
The rollout comes as blockchain developers and infrastructure providers increasingly prepare for the possibility that future quantum computers could break today’s public-key cryptography.
Unlike traditional systems where public keys often remain hidden until needed, Sui said blockchain accounts expose public keys onchain once transactions occur, allowing attackers to collect them years before practical quantum computers exist.
The network warned that such “harvest-now-forge-later” attacks do not require quantum hardware today because attackers can simply archive exposed public keys and wait until sufficiently capable machines become available.
Citing research from Google Quantum AI published in March 2026, Sui said recovering a private key from an exposed public key could eventually take minutes on a fault-tolerant quantum computer using fewer than 500,000 physical qubits.
Sui also pointed to changing government timelines around quantum security. The announcement noted that while the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology previously targeted 2030 to phase out classical cryptographic algorithms and 2035 to prohibit them, Executive Order 14412, signed in June 2026, requires U.S. federal agencies to deploy post-quantum key establishment by the end of 2030 and post-quantum digital signatures by the end of 2031 for sensitive systems.
Sui has chosen two algorithms for different security needs
Instead of relying on one post-quantum algorithm, Sui said it selected two standardized signature schemes built on different mathematical foundations so that a weakness discovered in one would not affect the other.
For everyday user accounts, the blockchain will integrate ML-DSA-65, the Level 3 parameter set defined under NIST’s FIPS 204 standard, directly into the protocol.
The network said it intentionally selected the higher-security Level 3 option instead of Level 1 following a July 2026 incident in which researchers used an AI model to reduce the effective security of the HAWK post-quantum signature candidate after experts had previously reviewed it. According to Sui, the incident did not affect ML-DSA, but it reinforced the value of choosing stronger security margins rather than lower-cost parameters.
The announcement added that ML-DSA-65 has already gained support elsewhere. Chrome and Cloudflare use the same security level for post-quantum encryption protecting more than half of human-initiated web traffic, while AWS Key Management Service now supports ML-DSA signing and Android 17’s Keystore generates quantum-safe signatures using ML-DSA-65 inside secure hardware.
Meanwhile, high-value assets will rely on SLH-DSA-SHA2-128s, the hash-based signature scheme standardized under FIPS 205. Rather than embedding it into the protocol itself, Sui will implement it through Move smart contracts, allowing vaults to remain compatible with future post-quantum standards without requiring changes to the network’s core protocol.
According to the announcement, using separate lattice-based and hash-based cryptographic families reduces the chance that a single cryptographic breakthrough would affect every protected asset.
Existing recovery phrases will continue to work
Instead of requiring users to generate completely new wallets, Sui said its deterministic key architecture allows quantum-safe private keys to be derived from the same recovery phrases users already store today.
Wallet backup and restoration therefore continue to work through existing seed phrases, while new derivation paths generate ML-DSA-65 keys.
Existing accounts will also avoid transferring assets to new addresses. Address aliases, which have already been deployed on Sui, let users replace their authorization keys with post-quantum keys while keeping the same wallet address and asset balances.
According to the network, larger signatures remain the main trade-off. Post-quantum signatures and public keys occupy substantially more space than Ed25519 keys, increasing transaction sizes across the network.
Verification costs, however, remain much closer to existing Ed25519 signatures than the larger key sizes might suggest. Sui said transaction size limits and programmable transaction blocks can accommodate the additional data while further optimization work continues.
Rollout starts with vaults before native accounts
The blockchain said its core implementation has already been completed and benchmarked, although independent security audits are currently underway.
Quantum-safe vaults are scheduled for mainnet deployment later this year. Native ML-DSA-65 accounts are expected to reach testnet before the end of 2026, while native account authentication on mainnet is targeted for the first quarter of 2027 alongside wallet, software development kit and command-line interface support.
The rollout remains optional, following the same deployment model previously used for zkLogin and passkeys. Existing accounts, applications and smart contracts continue operating without modification, and developers do not need to update applications immediately, according to the announcement.
Support for ML-DSA-65 will also extend to Sui’s multisignature authenticator, allowing accounts to require both a classical Ed25519 signature and a post-quantum ML-DSA-65 signature before authorizing transactions.
Other blockchain projects have also accelerated quantum-security work
Sui’s announcement follows a series of post-quantum security initiatives announced across the digital asset industry during recent months.
In May, BNB Chain reported successful testing of ML-DSA-44 transaction signatures and pqSTARK consensus aggregation for BSC. While the blockchain concluded that post-quantum migration could work with existing wallets and infrastructure, testing also showed signature sizes growing from 65 bytes to roughly 2,420 bytes, reducing transaction throughput by about 40% to 50% because of larger blocks and increased network traffic.
Institutional custody providers have also started focusing on future quantum risks rather than immediate attacks. BitGo introduced quantum-risk management tools in July that measure public-key exposure, group UTXOs to avoid leaving exposed balances behind, and help institutions move assets into fresh addresses after public keys become visible onchain.
Another proposal came from AmericanFortress, which published its Zero-Knowledge Proof of Seed Provenance design through the International Association for Cryptologic Research’s ePrint archive.
The proposal would allow existing Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana wallet addresses to prove ownership using zero-knowledge proofs without requiring users to rotate keys or transfer funds, although deployment would still depend on blockchain protocol upgrades and adoption by wallet providers. The proposal also cited Google’s recent quantum research while noting that current quantum computers remain incapable of carrying out such attacks today.
