Crypto has been obsessed with speed, cost and scalability for years. Now it may have to face a more existential question: What happens if nuclear safety breaks down?
That question shifts from theory to urgency. Quantum computers, machines that use the principles of quantum physics to process information in fundamentally different ways than today’s computers, could eventually solve the kinds of mathematical problems that underlie modern encryption.
Discussions about post-quantum cryptography have intensified across the industry in recent weeks, especially after new research from Google and academic collaborators suggested that such systems could one day break widely used encryption, potentially allowing systems like Bitcoin’s to be cracked in minutes instead of years.
As Bitcoin developers scramble to find a solution and Ethereum prepares for the event, Solana is trying to get ahead of that scenario.
Cryptography company Project Eleven has teamed up with the Solana Foundation to experiment with post-quantum security, technology designed to resist quantum attacks that could make today’s cryptography obsolete. The early work already reveals a difficult reality: making Solana quantum safe may come at the expense of the performance that defines it.
In practice, that effort meant going beyond theory and into live testing. Project Eleven worked with the Solana ecosystem to model how the network would behave if current cryptography were replaced, including deploying a test environment with quantum-resistant signatures – the digital keys that authorize transactions. The goal is not only to prove that the technology works, but also to understand what breaks when it is pushed to scale.
The first results show a clear trade-off.
The new, quantum-safe “signatures” that authorize transactions are much larger and heavier than those used today, roughly 20 to 40 times larger. Project Eleven CEO Alex Pruden, who founded the project after years in crypto and venture capital, brings a mix of military and industrial experience to the problem, told CoinDesk. This means that the network can process far fewer transactions at the same time. During testing, a version of Solana that used this new cryptography ran about 90% slower than it does today, Pruden said.
That consideration goes directly to the core of Solana’s design. The blockchain has built its reputation on high throughput and low latency, positioning itself as one of the fastest networks in crypto. But post-quantum cryptography – while more secure against future threats – comes with heavier data and computing requirements, making it harder to maintain those speeds.
‘Choose a wallet’
Solana may also face a more immediate structural challenge than its peers.
Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum, where wallet addresses are typically derived from hashed public keys, Solana exposes public keys directly. That difference is important in a quantum scenario. “In Solana, 100% of the network is vulnerable,” says Pruden.
“A quantum computer can pick any wallet and immediately start recovering the private key.”
Pruden, a former Army Green Beret, first became interested in Bitcoin while deployed to the Middle East, later working at Coinbase and joining Andreessen Horowitz’s venture team for his first fund. He then became an early leader at privacy-focused blockchain Aleo before launching Project Eleven, a company focused on preparing digital assets for what he calls “Q-day,” the moment when quantum computers could break modern-day cryptography.
Some developers in the Solana ecosystem, meanwhile, are looking at simpler, more direct solutions. An example is something called ‘Winternitz Vaults’, which uses a different type of cryptography that is believed to be more secure against quantum attacks. Rather than changing the entire network, these tools focus on protecting individual wallets, giving users a way to keep their funds safe while larger, system-wide upgrades are still considered.
Despite these hurdles, Solana has made progress faster than much of the industry in at least one respect: experimentation. “There’s something tangible,” Pruden said. “We actually have a testnet with post-quantum signatures.” He added that the Solana Foundation “deserves credit for at least being involved and wanting to do the work.”
Within crypto, that level of involvement remains rare. While some ecosystems, most notably Ethereum, have started discussing long-term migration paths, concrete implementation has been limited.
The broader challenge is not just technical, but also social: upgrading cryptography in decentralized systems requires coordination between developers, validators, applications and users, all of whom must move in sequence.
For Pruden, the risk is that the industry waits too long to begin that process. “This is tomorrow’s problem – until it’s today’s problem,” he said. “And then it takes four years to solve the problem.”
Read more: Here’s how Bitcoin, Ethereum and other networks are preparing for the looming quantum threat