Analysis: Solana Quantum Threat Experiment Reveals Trade-Off Between Security and Speed

ME News message, on April 4 (UTC+8). As Bitcoin developers urgently search for quantum-safe solutions and Ethereum prepares for “Q-Day,” Solana is trying to get ahead of potential threats. Project Eleven is currently working with the Solana Foundation to deploy quantum-safe signatures (Post-Quantum Signatures) on the test network, simulating how the network would run after replacing the existing cryptographic algorithms. Initial results show that quantum-safe signatures are about 20–40 times larger than current signatures, causing the network’s transaction processing speed to drop by roughly 90%, directly impacting Solana’s design advantage known for high throughput and low latency. In addition, Solana’s public-key design leaves the entire network 100% exposed to quantum-attack risk, and hackers can choose any wallet to attempt to recover the private key. The risk is higher than the technical and community-coordination difficulties faced by BitcoinEthereum’s mainnet. Solana is leading the industry in quantum-safe experimentation, and it already has a quantum-safe testnet that can run in practice. Project Eleven CEO Alex Pruden said, “If the industry waits until the quantum threat truly arrives before starting to fix it, it may take four years.” (Source: ODAILY)