Crypto firms are moving to secure wallets against future quantum computing threats, upgrading user-facing infrastructure faster than blockchains can change core protocols. The shift reflects a view that network-level upgrades to Bitcoin and Ethereum could take years, leaving wallets exposed. One estimate puts the threat as soon as 2030.
Silence Laboratories has added support for distributed, or multi-party computation (MPC), signatures using ML-DSA, an algorithm selected by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). CEO Jay Prakash said the company spent six months evaluating NIST algorithms for distributed signing systems. Not all meet MPC criteria, and fragmentation is a risk as each chain picks different schemes.
MPC systems split private keys across multiple devices. Silence Laboratories' approach allows firms to upgrade without changing how their systems operate. "Any bank or custodian with existing MPC infrastructure can now migrate to a post-quantum MPC-based wallet," Prakash said. The upgrade happens at the wallet level, meaning users would not need to take action.
Other companies are taking different approaches. Postquant Labs is building a system that adds quantum-resistant signatures on top of Bitcoin using a separate smart contract layer. StarkWare researcher Avihu Mordechai Levy proposed replacing Bitcoin's elliptic-curve cryptography with hash-based signatures, described as a "last-resort" approach that could be costly.
But wallet-level fixes have limits. Prakash warned: "If wallets are upgraded and chains are not upgrading, it won't work."