NEAR Protocol's Quantum Security Update Falls Flat, Price Stays Low

The NEAR Protocol has announced an update to its quantum security measures, but the news failed to lift the price of the token. Despite this development, the value of $NEAR fell by 3.04% over the past 24 hours, reaching a price of $1.60.

This update builds on existing work that was done with the mainnet upgrade in July 2026, which added quantum-safe signing through the NIST-approved FIPS-204 (ML-DSA) scheme. The Chain Signatures feature now extends this protection to multi-chain assets, allowing users to hold and secure assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and stablecoins via NEAR Intents.

The announcement explains how the network plans to get there through a combination of features: Chain Signatures, which enables single account signing for transactions on other chains, and NEAR Intents, which allows users to hold multiple assets within one NEAR account. This technical story behind today's update lets post-quantum protection extend outward from NEAR's own chain.