StarkWare unveils Starknet post-quantum roadmap, calls it crypto’s strongest yet

StarkWare released a three-phase roadmap for Starknet on June 30 aimed at reducing future quantum-computing attack risks, while maintaining that the network could become quantum-ready within months. The company says Starknet already has an architectural advantage because its zero-knowledge STARK proofs rely on hash-based cryptography that it considers post-quantum secure by design. In the first phase, StarkWare plans to replace Pedersen hashes with BLAKE2 in state commitments, contract addresses and network configuration, and add Falcon-512 signatures for consensus security. A second phase would focus on migration tools so existing smart contracts can be upgraded without manual rebuilds, while a final phase would address Ethereum-linked dependencies such as bridge syscalls and blob data availability, whose quantum safety depends on Ethereum’s own transition. CEO Eli Ben-Sasson said the tools needed to protect digital assets already exist and argued that the main risk is industry inaction, criticizing what he called the “elliptical illusion” that blockchains built on elliptic-curve cryptography can remain secure without major changes as quantum computing advances. The roadmap follows earlier work from StarkWare researcher Avihu Mordechai Levy, who proposed a quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction approach called QSB using hash-based constructions including Lamport signatures without requiring a soft fork or changes to Bitcoin’s base protocol.