BNB Chain tested the development of BSC’s post-quantum cryptography, but the experiment showed clear costs: large data loads and low throughput.
Summary
- BSC tested ML-DSA-44 signatures, but large transaction data reduced TPS by about 40% in the overall test.
- The signature size increased from 65 bytes to 2,420 bytes under BSC’s post-quantum migration test report.
- BNB Chain says that network scaling and data layer remain key hurdles before production deployments can proceed.
BNB Chain released its BSC Post-Quantum Cryptography Migration report on May 14. The report said that BSC tested post-quantum transaction signatures with ML-DSA-44 and used pqSTARK to compile consensus votes.
The report said the move could work with BSC’s current plans. It is always compatible with existing addresses, RPCs, SDKs, wallets, and transaction flows. That means users and developers won’t need to change basic account formats when the design goes into production.
BNB Chain said, “Post-quantum readiness is a reality for BSC today,” but added that data growth and network limitations are still key issues for the exchange. The team also said that quantum computers are “not yet at a stage” where they can break current production cryptography in real-world applications.
BSC TPS decreases as the signature size increases
The biggest problem came from the size of the data. BNB Chain said transaction signatures increased from 65 bytes to 2,420 bytes after moving from ECDSA to ML-DSA-44. The full transaction size has increased from 110 bytes to about 2.5 KB.
That is in addition to reducing the burden on the test. The report said that the block size increased to about 2 MB, while the throughput decreased by about 40% to 50% in the tests. In regional conditions, the TPS decreased by about 40%, indicating that network propagation becomes more difficult when blocks carry more data.
The report said that the fate resides in two places in the middle cases. The wide gap in slow conditions comes from large blocks moving across regions, not from a failure of consensus design.
The pqSTARK integration keeps the verifier load manageable
BNB Chain said that pooling consensus votes was done better than the transaction layer. pqSTARK aggregation is delivered at about 43:1 compression, which helps keep accuracy manageable during testing.
The development did not include all components of the BSC cryptographic system. The report said that KZG’s peer-to-peer handshake and commitment remained despite the current migration. P2P migration will require ML-KEM, while KZG replacement will require wider integration of the Ethereum ecosystem.
Experiments show that BSC can move towards quantum-resistant security, but not without a scaling function. BNB Chain said network scaling and data layer are still major hurdles before production deployment.
BNB Chain speed road map facing new exchange
Post-quantum testing adds a new layer to the BNB Chain’s extensive operational roadmap. Related reports noted that BNB Chain was targeting a sub-150 millisecond end and more than 20,000 TPS for complex operations by 2026.
That speed objective must now be balanced with a quantum-resistant security function. Recent tests show that BSC can use ML-DSA-44 and pqSTARK, but larger signatures can make the target of a large effect difficult without better data management and network scaling.
