BNB Chain's Post-Quantum Crypto Test Yields Mixed Results
BNB Chain has successfully tested post-quantum cryptography on its network and confirmed that it works, but at the cost of a significant drop in throughput. The test involved replacing the current cryptographic system with quantum-resistant alternatives, specifically ML-DSA-44 and pqSTARK aggregation.
The results showed that transactions per second decreased from 4,973 to 2,997, while transaction sizes ballooned from 110 bytes to about 2.5 KB. Signatures alone jumped from 65 bytes to 2,420 bytes, causing block sizes to climb from around 130 KB to nearly 2 MB at equivalent load.
Despite the performance hit, validator aggregation held up well, with a 43-to-1 reduction in signature size achieved through pqSTARK proof systems. However, cross-region data transfer suffered the most, with larger blocks taking longer to propagate between nodes.