StarkWare unveils Starknet post-quantum roadmap, calling it crypto's 'strongest' to date

StarkWare released what it described as crypto’s “strongest” post-quantum roadmap, setting out a three-phase plan to make Starknet quantum-ready by replacing remaining elliptic-curve dependencies and introducing migration tools for existing contracts.

The proposal builds on what StarkWare called Starknet’s “architectural advantage,” with its zero-knowledge STARK proofs relying on hash-based cryptography that the company said is post-quantum secure by design.

StarkWare said the plan could make the network quantum-ready within months, according to a statement shared with The Block on Tuesday.

Per the statement, the first phase of the roadmap would replace Pedersen hashing with BLAKE2 across state commitments, contract addresses, and network configuration, while also introducing post-quantum consensus signatures such as Falcon-512.

The second phase focuses on migration tooling for legacy contracts, while the final phase addresses external dependencies that remain linked to Ethereum, including bridge syscalls and blob data availability, which depend on Ethereum's own post-quantum transition.

"This document says: here is how we'll do it for Starknet. It's our path to making Starknet a safe haven for funds whatever quantum may bring. And the subtext is that if we can do it by seizing on this cryptography, then anyone else can do it by choosing the right cryptography," StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson said.

Industry preparedness 

Ben-Sasson said the cryptographic tools needed to secure digital assets against quantum threats already exist and argued that remaining vulnerabilities would stem from inaction rather than technical limitations.

He added that every crypto key could be protected if the necessary changes are implemented and criticized what he described as industry stubbornness around post-quantum migration.

The executive also coined the term "elliptical illusion" to describe what he called misplaced confidence that blockchains built on elliptic-curve cryptography will remain secure without significant changes as quantum computing advances. 

Elliptic-curve systems underpin transaction signatures and ownership verification across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and much of the broader digital infrastructure used today.

The roadmap follows a separate development earlier this year when StarkWare researcher Avihu Mordechai Levy published a proposal for quantum-safe Bitcoin transactions that operates without a soft fork or modification to Bitcoin's underlying protocol. 

The approach, referred to as QSB, replaces elliptic-curve assumptions with hash-based constructions including Lamport signatures. Levy reported the method achieves roughly 118-bit second pre-image resistance under a quantum threat model while remaining compatible with Bitcoin's existing script limitations of 201 non-push opcodes and 10,000 bytes.