BNB Smart Chain Shows Quantum-Safe Crypto Works Despite 50% Throughput Drop

Under the new framework, average transaction size rises from roughly 110 bytes to about 2.5 kilobytes. At the network level, block sizes increase from around 130 kilobytes to nearly 2 megabytes under equivalent transaction loads.

Even so, developers said the results demonstrate that quantum-safe migration is technically feasible using current standards and infrastructure.

One of the key breakthroughs came at the consensus layer. Although individual post-quantum signatures are substantially larger than existing cryptographic signatures, aggregation through pqSTARK compression reduced validator communication overhead to manageable levels.

In one example, six validator signatures totaling 14.5 kilobytes were compressed into a proof of roughly 340 bytes, producing a compression ratio of approximately 43-to-1.

Developers selected ML-DSA-44 over larger security variants because of efficiency concerns. While stronger versions offer higher theoretical protection, they also produce substantially larger signatures that would further reduce throughput. Researchers concluded that ML-DSA-44 provides a sufficient security margin given estimates that cryptographically relevant quantum computers remain at least a decade away.