Justin Sun, the founder of the Tron layer-1 blockchain, announced on Friday that the network’s post-quantum signature capability has gone live on its Nile testnet. This post-quantum cryptographic signature is aimed at testing if it could protect the network against next-generation computing threats.
The Nile testnet is a public testnet network for Tron that is designed as a clone of the main blockchain — but to test future protocol upgrades. Developers use this testnet to experiment with features built for Tron before they are considered for a roll out on the network.
Announcing the development Sun said, “In the face of the quantum era, TRON is taking action to build the most secure blockchain for the post-quantum age.”
This quantum-resistant signature feature was reviewd by the network operators as Committee Proposal No. 20628. It was approved to be activated on the Nile testnet on July 2.
The “FN-DSA-512” is the first signature algorithm to go live on Nile. It introduces advanced mathematical defenses to secure the high-throughput network ahead of the commercial arrival of the quantum computers, which pose severe threat to the present version of cryptography.
It is being tested across processes including transaction signing, block signing on the core consensus layer, and node-to-node network communicators.
Tron-focussed developers have been invited to start experimenting with the quantum resistant feature.
In March, Google’s Quantum AI division published a white paper saying quantum computers could break Bitcoin-era encryption sooner than many in the crypto industry expected.
Quantum computers are capable of running the Shor’s algorithm. This mathematical process can instantly break the cryptography technology which secures the present blockchain ecosystems and their private keys.
In order to conduct deep research around the threats of quantum compution on the on-chain fabric, Coinbase recently established an independent Board on Quantum Computing and Blockchain. In April this year, the research body said that the crypto industry should be ready soon to tackle the risks of quantum advancements. The board said If quantum computers become powerful enough, they could weaken the public-key cryptography that is presently used to protect crypto wallets and validator signatures.
More blockchains are now initiating experiments to explore ways to tackle the quantum threat before the security of blockchain systems gets compromised.
Back in May, the developers behind the Tezor blockchain introduced Tezos Encrypted Ledger (TzEL), created to test private, post-quantum payments. The system is still in an experimental stage and has no real value for now, but, it has successfully managed to dran a complete post-quantum test path from wallet to rollup execution on the chain.
