Insider Brief
- Tezos engineering teams have launched Quantumnet, an experimental public testnet for testing post-quantum consensus and cryptographic components.
- Quantumnet replaces or tests alternatives for quantum-vulnerable parts of Tezos, including randomness generation, attestation aggregation and the Data Availability Layer.
- Developers and Tezos bakers can run the testnet and provide feedback as teams work toward a potential post-quantum protocol amendment for mainnet.
PRESS RELEASE — Engineering teams in the Tezos ecosystem have successfully launched Quantumnet, an experimental post-quantum testnet that previews an early post-quantum version of the Tezos network. Developers at Nomadic Labs, Trilitech, alongside other contributors, collaborated on the code for the experimental environment, which is designed to let network validators (called bakers in the Tezos ecosystem) and researchers run post-quantum consensus code for the first time. While not intended for production use, Quantumnet is publicly available to anyone who would like to run it, and represents the first milestone towards a fully post-quantum instance of Tezos running on mainnet.
Recent developments in AI and quantum computing have greatly accelerated the threat that quantum computing poses to current cryptography standards. Quantum error correction has crossed a key milestone: as quantum processors scale up, logical error rates are now falling exponentially rather than compounding, with some experiments showing error rates roughly halving with each step up in scale. At the same time, large language models (LLMs), which are already highly capable at writing and optimizing code, are increasingly being used to design and refine quantum algorithms themselves, further compressing the timeline. Google itself has set a 2029 deadline to fully migrate its systems to post-quantum cryptography, underscoring the urgency for developers of decentralized networks such as blockchains.
Speaking about the launch, Arthur Breitman, co-founder of Tezos, said, “I’m pleased to see Tezos at the forefront of post-quantum preparedness.”
Tezos is uniquely positioned to adapt to the post-quantum requirements of the future, given an on-chain governance mechanism which enables validators to vote on new features and capabilities. In fact, from the project’s inception, the need to evolve was seen as critical for resilience. The Tezos position paper explicitly anticipated having “new cryptographic primitives included in the scripting language as the need develops”. The first step to make Tezos prepared for the post-quantum age was taken with the Ushuaia protocol amendment, which activated on June 30, 2026. This introduced testnet-only support, behind a feature flag, quantum-resistant user keys via the NIST-standardized ML-DSA-44 post-quantum signature scheme. Additionally, the launch of TzEL earlier this year demonstrated that private, post-quantum transactions are achievable. Today’s announcement of a post-quantum testnet builds on that work and showcases Tezos’ continued ability to adapt and evolve.
Quantumnet addresses several places where the core Tezos protocol currently relies on quantum-vulnerable cryptography: the protocol’s random seed generation, aggregation of consensus attestations, the Data Availability Layer, and confidential transactions. Randomness generation has been hardened by removing the protocol’s Verifiable Delay Function entirely, replacing it with a smooth weighted round-robin that preserves fairness without needing randomness at all. For attestation aggregation, the team adopted a post-quantum proof system from the LeanEthereum project, which combines thousands of individual signatures at high speed (over 1,400 per second on standard hardware) with a newer, more efficient version already in the pipeline. For the Data Availability Layer, the team selected ZODA, a highly efficient, “zero overhead” protocol that adds essentially no communication overhead while offering strong post-quantum security guarantees. Confidential transactions and timelock puzzles round out the picture: the former is already addressed by TzEL, while the latter was determined to be a lesser priority, to be addressed at a later stage, though post-quantum alternatives exist should they be needed later.
Zaynah Dargaye, Core Layer 1 Engineering Manager at Nomadic Labs, said, “Quantumnet gives us a space to experiment rigorously and in the open on a major topic for the Tezos ecosystem. Through this first iteration of Quantumnet, the team can explore what replacing existing cryptographic components with quantum-resistant alternatives means for Tezos, from algorithms and architecture to the transition itself. We are doing this work early so that we have the time to learn, iterate and ultimately make sure Tezos is ready for a post-quantum future, with as smooth a transition path as possible. This is just the beginning, and it is particularly exciting to see this work taking shape.”
The pieces are now falling into place for a fully post-quantum version of Tezos. Developer teams will continue to iterate on the testnet until it is suitably ready to be submitted as a proposed protocol amendment. Tezos bakers and community members are encouraged to run the experimental software (which may carry higher hardware requirements than mainnet) and provide feedback on their experience that will prove invaluable to the continued development of the network. Learn more at https://tezosagora.org
