Fireblocks Cuts Ethereum Signature Verification Gas Costs by 6.6x

Fireblocks has made significant strides in optimizing the gas cost of Ethereum's post-quantum ML-DSA-44 signature verification. According to Pluang, this improvement was achieved by optimizing core components such as SHAKE-256 hashing and number theoretic transform computations within the existing EVM.

The reduction in gas cost is substantial, with a 6.6x improvement from 8.09 million to 1.23 million, all without altering the Ethereum protocol.

This breakthrough was accomplished by an AI-driven research team over nine days at a cost of approximately $7,500.