Ripple Unveils Quantum-Resistant Phased Roadmap: Aims to Upgrade XRP Ledger by 2028

Odaily News Ripple has announced a phased roadmap, planning to advance the XRP Ledger towards a quantum-resistant upgrade by 2028. The plan includes formulating a "Quantum-Day" contingency plan to address potential sudden threats from quantum computing and will involve preliminary testing and validation in collaboration with Project Eleven. Ripple stated that this initiative aims to prepare in advance for the transition to post-quantum security, with the entire plan to be implemented in four phases:

Phase 1: Q-Day Emergency Preparedness (Initiated). Establish a Quantum Day (Q-Day) emergency response mechanism. If existing classical cryptographic systems are suddenly compromised, the network will immediately stop accepting traditional public key signatures and enforce a mandatory migration to quantum-safe accounts.

Phase 2: Risk Assessment & Algorithm Testing (First Half of 2026). Conduct a comprehensive assessment of the impact of post-quantum cryptography on the XRP Ledger's network performance, storage, and bandwidth. Collaborate with Project Eleven to perform validator-level testing and Devnet benchmarking, deploy the NIST-standardized ML-DSA quantum-safe signature scheme, and develop a prototype for a post-quantum custody wallet.

Phase 3: Devnet Hybrid Integration (Second Half of 2026). Integrate candidate post-quantum signature schemes in parallel with existing elliptic curve signatures on the Developer Network (Devnet), allowing developers to test performance and system impact without affecting the mainnet. Simultaneously explore post-quantum zero-knowledge proof primitives and homomorphic encryption technologies for Confidential Transfers, to advance the privacy and compliance capabilities for tokenized real-world assets on the XRPL.

Phase 4: Mainnet Full Upgrade (Target 2028). Submit a formal protocol Amendment. Upon approval through validator voting, natively enable full post-quantum cryptography on the mainnet. (Cointelegraph)