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- Solana is working with Project Eleven to test quantum-resistant signatures ahead of possible future quantum threats.
- Early tests show the security upgrade comes with a severe cost, with signature sizes growing sharply and network speed falling by about 90%.
Solana is trying to get ahead of a problem most blockchains still discuss in largely theoretical terms. The catch is that the first answers look expensive.
The network is collaborating with Project Eleven to test quantum-resistant signatures, an effort aimed at preparing for a future in which quantum computers could threaten today’s cryptographic systems. That kind of forward planning is easy to applaud in principle. In practice, though, the engineering tradeoff is already becoming hard to ignore.
Bigger signatures, slower chain
The early test results point to the central problem. Quantum-resistant signatures are reportedly as much as 40 times larger than current ones. That alone would be enough to raise concerns on a high-throughput chain. But the more immediate issue is performance. According to the findings, those larger signatures could reduce network speed by roughly 90%.
For Solana, that is not a minor inconvenience. Speed is one of the network’s defining claims, and a slowdown of that scale strikes directly at the model that made it competitive in the first place. A blockchain can harden itself against a future cryptographic threat, yes, but if the cost is a dramatic loss in throughput, the solution starts to create its own problem.
Security planning collides with scalability
That tension is what makes the experiment worth watching. Solana is not alone in facing the quantum question, but it is among the first major ecosystems to publicly test how post-quantum cryptography behaves under real performance expectations. The result, at least so far, is a reminder that quantum readiness is not just a software patch waiting to be applied.
It is a system-level redesign challenge. The larger the signatures, the heavier the burden on bandwidth, storage and transaction processing. And on a chain optimized for speed, those costs show up fast.
So the issue now is less whether quantum-resistant cryptography is necessary in the long run. It is whether networks like Solana can adopt it without undermining the very performance characteristics that made them viable in the first place.
