The Near One team announced this May 6 that the NEAR Protocol cryptocurrency network will adopt ML-DSA (FIPS-204, formerly known as Dilithium) as its first post-quantum signature scheme. Deployment will begin on a testnet (testnet) before the end of the second quarter of 2026.
ML-DSA is a signature scheme based on lattices (mathematical structures that quantum computers cannot efficiently solve with known algorithms) approved by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2024, as already reported by CriptoNoticias.
According to Near One, the election was based on that institutional support since ML-DSA is one of the first post-quantum standards validated by NIST after years of international review. The statement does not detail internal tests carried out on the scheme nor does it mention alternatives evaluated and discarded.
On most networks, a user’s address is generated directly from their cryptographic key. Changing that key means changing direction and moving all assets. In NEAR, according to the team, this relationship does not exist since A user account is independent of the key that controls it.
That means a user could adopt a post-quantum key with a single transactionsending a single instruction to the network, without moving funds, without creating a new account, without additional coordination, and your account would be protected with the new scheme from that moment on. Near One describes that operation as equivalent to changing a password.
On the other hand, in networks such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, the address is directly linked to the pair of cryptographic keys. Incorporate a new signature scheme in those networks would require a hard fork (a backwards-incompatible protocol modification) or complex migrations, which involves a considerably more difficult technical consensus process.
However, Near One recognizes that Software and hardware wallets must update their support for this rotation to be operational. Until that happens, protection does not reach the end user.
An announcement in the midst of deadlines that are compressed
The urgencies of the NEAR team in the face of quantum advance coincide with the horizon proposed by part of the scientific community. Mikhail Lukin, co-founder of the Harvard Quantum Initiative, estimated that fault-tolerant quantum computers could be available before the end of this decadeadvancing the field’s previous consensus by five to ten years.
Lukin’s projection coincides with that of Google, Cloudflare and Grayscale, which, as CriptoNoticias reported, They set 2029 as the horizon to complete their own post-quantum migrations. NEAR aims to have its first operational testnet scheme before that deadline arrives.
Likewise, on May 6, post-quantum cryptography firm Project Eleven warned that the ‘Q-Day’ would arrive between 2030 and 2033 and that up to 6.9 million bitcoins (about 33% of the total supply) would be exposed, as reported by CriptoNoticias.
In this way, while ecosystem participants make their conjectures about ‘Q-day’, different protocols and networks, such as NEAR, begin their practical tests towards post-quantum schemes.