Sui (SUI) will adopt two NIST-approved post-quantum signature schemes, with quantum-safe account authentication targeted for Mainnet in the first quarter of 2027.
Key Points:
- Sui plans ML-DSA-65 for everyday accounts and SLH-DSA-SHA2-128s for high-value smart contract vaults
- Existing recovery phrases and wallet addresses carry over to quantum-safe keys
- Quantum-safe vaults are targeted for Mainnet this year, with native accounts on Testnet by year-end
Sui Post-Quantum Signature Plan
The Sui Foundation outlined the plan on Aug. 6, calling it a routine protocol-feature update rather than a change to consensus or existing state. Independent audits are still running, and the foundation said its timelines stay open while that review and Testnet feedback continue. Nothing changes today.
ML-DSA-65, the Level 3 parameter set defined under the NIST standard known as FIPS 204, will serve as a native protocol signature scheme for everyday accounts. The hash-based SLH-DSA-SHA2-128s, which corresponds to FIPS 205, will instead guard high-value vaults from inside Move smart contracts, keeping Sui aligned with whatever standards the industry settles on.
The two rest on different mathematics, one lattice-based and one hash-based, so a weakness found in one does not undermine the other.
Users will not need fresh recovery phrases, since Sui keys derive deterministically from a seed. Address aliases, already deployed on the network, let an existing account swap its authorization key for a post-quantum one without moving any assets.
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Why Quantum Key Exposure Matters
A public key onchain sits exposed the moment an account transacts, unlike a key kept behind a corporate perimeter. Sui argues that harvest-now-forge-later collection needs no quantum hardware, only a visible key and patience.
Google Quantum AI estimated in March 2026 that recovering a private key from an exposed public key would run in minutes on a fault-tolerant machine of under half a million physical qubits. The network picked Level 3 rather than the cheaper Level 1 option, for a wider margin.
That choice followed a July incident in which an AI model halved the effective key strength of HAWK, a rival post-quantum candidate, in roughly 60 hours after two years of expert review had cleared it.
Blockchain Quantum Readiness Race
Executive Order 14412, signed in June, pulled federal deadlines forward and now requires post-quantum digital signatures on sensitive government systems by the end of 2031. NIST had previously planned to deprecate the classical algorithms in 2030 and disallow them in 2035.
Sui is not moving alone. StarkWare published a three-phase roadmap for Starknet (STRK) in June, leaning on hash-based STARK proofs that its team says are already quantum-safe by design. The Solana (SOL) Foundation set out a phased migration built around the Falcon signature scheme in April, following testnet experiments with Project Eleven late in 2025.
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