Justin Sun said Saturday that TRON(TRX), home to about $95 billion in stablecoins, can bring quantum-resistant cryptography to its mainnet at any time, though he named no date. Key Points: Su
Justin Sun said Saturday that TRON(TRX), home to about $95 billion in stablecoins, can bring quantum-resistant cryptography to its mainnet at any time, though he named no date.
Key Points:
- Sun said TRON's post-quantum cryptography is live on testnet and ready for mainnet, without giving a launch date.
- The Nile testnet has supported two post-quantum signature schemes since a Jun. 30 software upgrade.
- An earlier schedule called for a mainnet rollout in the third quarter, which ended Sept. 30.
Sun, who founded the network, said in an Oct. 10 post on X that TRON's post-quantum cryptography is now live on testnet and that the team is tracking progress in quantum computing and artificial intelligence. "We're ready to bring quantum resistance to mainnet at any time," he wrote. He gave no activation date.
He added that TRON is set to be one of the few major blockchains protected before so-called Q-Day, when quantum computers could break today's encryption standards. The testnet work dates to Jun. 30, when TRON's Nile testnet deployed a software build supporting two post-quantum signature schemes, the Falcon-based FN-DSA-512 and the Dilithium-based ML-DSA-44.
That build covers transactions, block signing, peer-to-peer handshakes and smart contract verification. On Nile, each scheme switches on through a separate committee vote, and FN-DSA-512 was the first opened to developers in July. Mainnet activation would need its own governance approval, and no date has been announced.
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Developers worry that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could break the elliptic-curve cryptography that secures Bitcoin(BTC), Ethereum(ETH) and many other networks. No publicly known machine can do that today.
Ethereum researcher Justin Drake has estimated a small but meaningful chance of such a break by the early 2030s, while cautioning that attack timelines are probabilistic, not certain. Binance founder Changpeng Zhaoargued earlier this year that networks can answer the risk with new algorithms, saying "all crypto has to do is upgrade." He saw no need to panic.
The switch carries a cost, because FN-DSA-512 signatures run up to 667 bytes and ML-DSA-44 signatures are fixed at 2,420 bytes, against roughly 64 to 72 bytes for the signatures TRON uses now. Larger signatures add bandwidth and storage loads to a chain where stablecoin supply stands near $95 billion, almost all of it Tether(USDT).
Sun launched the effort on Apr. 14, pledging that TRON would be the first major public chain to deploy such signatures on mainnet and casting Bitcoin and Ethereum as slower to act. Later that month he outlined a schedule that put a testnet launch in the second quarter and a mainnet rollout in the third. By August he was promising a full network upgrade by the end of 2026, and the third quarter closed on Sept. 30 with the feature still confined to the testnet.
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