Qwai Get the wallet

How Qwai stays safe when the math changes.

THE THREAT

What a quantum computer breaks.

Shor's algorithm finds the private key behind any elliptic-curve public key. Whoever runs it first can sign as anyone whose public key has appeared on a chain. These are the signatures each chain uses for accounts today.

ChainAccount signaturesKind of mathAgainst Shor's algorithm
BitcoinECDSA, SchnorrElliptic curveBroken
EthereumECDSA (BLS for validators)Elliptic curve, pairingsBroken
SolanaEd25519Elliptic curveBroken
SuiEd25519, ECDSAElliptic curveBroken
NEAREd25519, ECDSAElliptic curveBroken
QwaiML-DSA-65, SLH-DSALattices, hash functionsNo known attack

Several of these chains have plans or optional add-ons for post-quantum keys. On Qwai it is the only kind there has ever been, so there are no old accounts to migrate and no exposed keys waiting.

QUANTUM RESISTANT

Standards, not experiments.

Qwai uses the signature schemes NIST standardised in 2024 after years of public attack by the world's cryptographers.

ML-DSA-65

FIPS 204. Lattice-based. The everyday key for accounts and validators. 1,952-byte public keys, 3,309-byte signatures.

SLH-DSA

FIPS 205. Built from hash functions alone, the most conservative assumption in cryptography. 7,856-byte signatures.

BLAKE3

Every address, block, transaction id and state proof. Each use is tagged, so a hash made for one purpose can never stand in for another.

Hash-only state

Balances and contract storage sit in a Merkle tree. Proofs need a hash function and nothing else.

AI MATH RESISTANT

Two families of math. Keys that can move.

Lattice problems are young compared with factoring. A new attack, found by a person or by an AI system, is the risk post-quantum cryptography still carries. Qwai answers it twice.

  • Two-key accounts. An account can require a lattice signature and a hash-based signature on every transaction. An attacker has to break both, and they share no mathematics.
  • Key policies. An account is a rule, "k of these n keys", not a single key. Mix key types, add keys, raise the threshold.
  • Rotation without moving. Replace your keys and keep your address. If a scheme weakens, accounts change keys in one transaction and nothing else about them changes.
  • New schemes slot in. Signatures carry the name of their scheme, so a future standard is an addition, not a rebuild.

No cryptography can be proven unbreakable. Qwai is built so one break is survivable.

HIGH THROUGHPUT

Designed around large signatures.

A post-quantum signature is about fifty times the size of an elliptic-curve one. A chain that bolts them on slows down. Qwai started from them.

30,404tx/s

Measured: signature check and state update for ML-DSA transactions on 8 laptop cores, without networking.

4MB blocks

About 1,180 transfers in each today. That is a setting of the network, not a limit of the software.

1block

To finality. More than two thirds of stake signs each block; it cannot be reorganised.

Parallel verification

Signatures in a block are checked on every core at once, then transactions are applied in order.

Signatures kept apart

A block commits to transactions and to their signatures separately, so signatures can be pruned or summarised later without changing history.

Used gas, not reserved gas

A block is filled by what contract calls really used, so busy blocks hold many more calls.

Fees by size

A transfer costs what its bytes cost. Fees stay predictable and tiny.

Consensus and staking.

Byzantine fault tolerant proof of stake. The chain stays correct while less than a third of stake is dishonest, and keeps running while more than two thirds is online.

  • Proposers take turns in proportion to stake, in an order nobody can steer.
  • Signing two different blocks at one height burns 5% of the stake and removes the validator for good.
  • A validator that stops signing is set aside until its owner brings it back.
  • Withdrawn stake unlocks after 14 days.
  • Supply is fixed at 1,000,000,000 QWAI. There is no inflation; validators earn fees.

Where Qwai is today.

Qwai is a new chain and says so plainly.

  • The code has been through internal security review and adversarial testing. An independent outside audit has not been done yet.
  • Private transactions and private contracts are planned and not yet built.
  • The validator set is small and growing. Anyone can run a node and stake.