The Post-Quantum-Team is a group of cybersecurity and cyberdefense engineering students. Our engineering school named ENSIBS is based in Brittany, in the west of France. PQT has been created in 2022 to create a Blockchain that will resist quantum attacks.
We know that quantum computing is arriving. The quantum supremacy will lead to the obsolescence of the main actual cryptographic standards. RSA and Elliptic-Curve Cryptography will no longer be secure. Those standards, particularly ECC, are used by all the blockchains nowadays. A lack of security in ECC will obviously lead to a lack of security in every blockchain implementation.
To anticipate the arrival of quantum computers, the American National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched a competition in 2016 to standardize “Post-Quantum Cryptography”. The competition ended in 2022 with 4 winners. 3 of them are digital signature algorithms and could be implemented in blockchain.
Our objective is to use Falcon-512, one of those standardized digital signature algorithms and implement it in a performant, secure and environmental-friendly blockchain: NEAR Protocol.
NEAR Protocol is a blockchain that launched officially in April 2021. This protocol was built with high-security standards and allows several thousands of transactions per second. It is one of the best blockchain nowadays in terms of performance, security and environmental impact.
PQB corresponds to Post-Quantum Blockchain. It is an implementation of NEAR Protocol that secures transactions with Post-Quantum Wallet!
"Post-Quantum" corresponds to the era that will come when quantum computers will be mastered. Blockchains cryptography as we know it nowadays will no longer be secure.
We are the "Post-Quantum Team", a group of cybersecurity and cyberdefense engineering students. Our school is the ENSIBS, based in France, in Britanny (west of France).
To secure the users transactions, we use Falcon-512. It is one of the NIST-selected Post-Quantum Cryptography algorithms that allows digital signatures.
For now, we don't secure the consensus mechanism.
Our choice of using Falcon-512 is based on 3 main reasons:
- Public Key and Digital Signature size- Security performance and ease of evolution
- Computing performance
NEAR Protocol is:
- Secured, by its implementation (using PoS and Hidden validators)
- A High-Performance blockchain (using shards)
- Environment-friendly
