Crypto firms roll out post-quantum wallets amid protocol delays

Several crypto companies are releasing post‑quantum wallets that use multi‑party computation (MPC) and layer‑2 overlays to protect private keys while core blockchain protocol upgrades proceed slowly. Firms say wallet‑level fixes can be deployed faster than changes to networks such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, which require consensus and long testing cycles.

Silence Laboratories is offering an upgrade path for institutional and custody wallets that adds distributed MPC signatures and support for National Institute of Standards and Technology‑selected post‑quantum algorithms including SPHINCS+, Falcon and CRYSTALS‑Dilithium. In MPC systems, a private key is split into shares across separate devices so signatures are produced jointly without ever reconstructing the full key.

Jay Prakash, CEO and co‑founder of Silence Laboratories, described the company’s approach as a code‑level migration that works with existing MPC infrastructure. He explained the upgrade can be delivered as a software development kit so developer libraries implement the new algorithms while users keep the same wallet experience.

Other developers are pursuing different technical routes. One team is building a quantum‑resistant signing layer that sits on top of Bitcoin and uses a smart‑contract‑style mechanism rather than changing the base protocol. A separate proposal from a researcher associated with scaling technology work suggests inserting hash‑based signatures into Bitcoin as a last‑resort protocol update; the proposal’s authors say such a change would be costly and hard to scale.

A technical report from a quantum security firm estimates a cryptographically relevant quantum computer capable of breaking widely used elliptic‑curve signatures could appear within four to seven years and places a possible “Q‑Day” as soon as 2030. The firm also awarded a bounty to a researcher who used a publicly available quantum device to break a simplified 15‑bit elliptic‑curve key, a demonstration intended to illustrate the risks to current cryptography.

Industry participants note limits to wallet‑level defenses. Not all post‑quantum algorithms are easy to use with MPC because of differences in signature size, computation needs and optimization choices. That variation could produce fragmentation across chains and custody services. Firms stress that wallet upgrades alone cannot protect transactions if underlying blockchains do not accept post‑quantum signing schemes after public keys appear on chain.

Operational issues add complexity. Custodians commonly use distributed signing, but coordination among node operators, developers and end users varies. Wallet upgrades that require no user action reduce friction, yet migrating many services and chains involves planning, interoperability decisions and trade‑offs among algorithm performance, storage and network costs.

Because protocol‑level changes to major networks involve broad agreement and lengthy testing, many companies are prioritizing wallet and custody defenses while tracking developments in quantum hardware and post‑quantum standardization.