TL;DR
- Ripple is introducing a multi-phase roadmap to prepare the XRP Ledger (XRPL) for a post-quantum future, with a target for full readiness by 2028.
- The approach starts now, with active testing of quantum-resistant cryptography and a hybrid rollout that runs alongside existing systems before scaling.
- Ripple is working with Project Eleven to accelerate development, including validator testing and early custody prototypes.
- The roadmap also includes a “Quantum-Day” contingency plan to enable a secure migration to quantum-safe accounts if current standards are compromised.
Recent research from Google Quantum AI is bringing renewed attention to what quantum computing could mean for the crypto industry. The findings show that the cryptography most blockchains rely on today can be broken by sufficiently advanced quantum computers, including the algorithms that secure wallets, sign transactions, and protect digital assets.
This does not mean assets are at risk today. But the threat has moved from theoretical to credible, and preparation timelines now matter.
There’s a more subtle risk too, one researchers call “harvest now, decrypt later.” In simple terms, bad actors can collect publicly visible cryptographic data from the blockchain today and hold onto it, waiting for quantum hardware to mature enough to crack it and access the assets behind it.
The findings don’t point to an immediate break. But they do make it clear that systems securing long-lived value need to start planning for a post-quantum transition. At RippleX, the team has been working ahead of this curve, and here’s what that means for XRPL.
Why these findings matter for XRPL
For XRPL specifically, the implications are clear:
- Every time an account signs a transaction, its public key becomes visible onchain, and in a post-quantum world, that exposure could eventually be exploited.
- Accounts that hold value over long periods of time are the most important to protect.
- This is not just a technical challenge. It’s an operational one that touches every XRP holder and every application built on the network.
Lastly, we should not view addressing the quantum threat on XRPL as a single upgrade, but rather a multi-phased strategy of carefully migrating a live, global financial infrastructure without compromising the value of digital assets protected by the XRPL.
Where XRPL already has an advantage
XRPL already has the building blocks in place that support that forward migration, with a built-in user experience that makes upgrades easier over time.
At the account level, XRPL supports native key rotation, which means users can move away from potentially vulnerable keys over time without needing to change their underlying accounts. That gives account owners a practical path to respond as risk evolves, rather than value being locked to a single key pair. This stands in contrast to most other blockchains, including Ethereum, where no protocol native equivalent exists, and any post-quantum migration would require users to manually move assets to entirely new accounts or rely on advanced methods like smart wallets.
In addition, XRPL’s seed-based key generation enables deterministic derivation of new keys. This allows users to securely generate and manage new key material, which is essential for any coordinated upgrade or transition.
To be clear, these capabilities are not post-quantum solutions on their own. But they are foundational building blocks, native to the protocol, and they give XRPL a credible, practical migration path that most other networks would have to build from scratch.
While these existing building blocks provide a practical foundation for migration, it’s important to stay focused on executing our roadmap towards the post-quantum era on XRPL.
What we’re doing about it: a multi-phased roadmap
At Ripple, this work is a cross-functional collaboration with our applied cryptography team: Dr. Murat Cenk, Dr. Tamas Visegrady, Dr. Oleg Burundukov and Dr. Aanchal Malhotra, alongside engineers like Denis Angell who are already prototyping pieces of this future.
What’s important here is that we’re not treating post-quantum migration as a single software upgrade. It’s an architectural challenge touching performance, storage, usability, cryptography, and protocol design. That’s why we’re approaching this as a multi-phase roadmap.
We’re optimizing for two things in parallel in our roadmap: (1) Preserve XRPL strengths today as we work on post-quantum crypto transition, (2) Prepare for contingencies and minimize disruption if Q-Day arrives unexpectedly. This requires deliberate and sequenced execution.
We explain our roadmap in four phases:
Phase 1: Post-quantum recovery (Q-Day readiness)
The idea here is that if classical cryptography breaks at any point, we will activate our contingency plan to allow for safe migration to PQC.
In that scenario, XRPL would enforce a hard shift: classical public-key signature standards are no longer accepted by the network, and funds must move to post-quantum secure accounts.
The key is enabling safe recovery for all account owners. One path we’re exploring to achieve this is using PQ-based zero-knowledge proofs to prove ownership of existing keys without exposing them, allowing users to migrate funds even in a compromised cryptographic environment. This approach leverages existing building blocks we have developed on XRPL in terms of seed-based key generation.
This phase is about resilience under pressure. Not just surviving Q-Day, but having a clear, secure path forward when it arrives.
Phase 2: Proactive planning and experimentation (1st half of 2026)
This phase is about assessing the full impact of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) on XRPL and expanding experimentation with industry-standard, NIST-recommended algorithms, a de facto global standards body for cryptography and cybersecurity.
We begin with a full assessment of quantum risk across the network, along with an evaluation of how these changes would impact transaction performance, storage, and bandwidth. Post-quantum cryptography comes with tradeoffs. Larger keys and signatures have real implications at ledger scale, and we need to understand those tradeoffs and explore the architectural adjustments required.
In parallel, we are identifying potential cryptographic approaches and mapping how they could be integrated into XRPL’s architecture. This includes early proof-of-concept work already underway both internally and through contributions from core engineers like Denis Angell (ML-DSA on AlphaNet).
We’ll be testing a number of NIST-recommended schemes which are different types of quantum-resistant signature methods, not just in isolation, but in the context of XRPL’s transaction model. The goal is to understand how these schemes behave under real workload conditions: signature size, verification cost, throughput impact, and overall network efficiency.
We’re collaborating with Project Eleven to accelerate early experimentation. They are building a proof-of-concept hybrid post-quantum signing implementation (including validator-level testing, Devnet benchmarking, and a post-quantum custody wallet prototype) to harden XRPL infrastructure against future quantum threats. Their efforts significantly help move our timeline for the second phase.
Phase 3: Exploration of post-quantum primitives (2nd half of 2026)
With that foundation in place, the next step is controlled transition. We will be integrating candidate post-quantum signature schemes alongside existing elliptic curve signatures, starting on Devnet for application developer testing. Running these in parallel allows developers to evaluate performance, usability, and system impact without disrupting the current network.
At the same time, we’re looking beyond signatures. Post-quantum readiness goes beyond replacing today’s standard signing algorithms. We are rethinking the broader cryptographic stack and that includes exploring post-quantum-friendly primitives for zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption, which play a role in advancing XRPL’s privacy and compliance capabilities for tokenization use cases (i.e., Confidential Transfers for MPTs).
This phase is where experimentation meets system design. We’re not just asking “what works cryptographically?” We’re asking “what works for XRPL at scale?”
Phase 4: Full transition for PQ signatures (targeting 2028)
This is where we move from experimentation to execution with the entire XRPL ecosystem. We’ll design, build and propose a new amendment to the XRPL ecosystem for native post-quantum cryptography and begin transitioning the network to PQC-based signatures at scale. The focus here is making PQC production-ready, tightening performance, throughput, minimizing overhead, and ensuring validator operators are able to meet XRPL’s bar for reliability and fast deterministic settlement.
The challenge goes beyond cryptography at this point and is more about ensuring we don’t break what already works on XRPL. This will require diligence and coordination with ecosystem partners to ensure a smooth and safe transition for all accounts. We have milestones for the first half of 2026, and are targeting full transition no later than 2028.
Guiding principles for post-quantum era for XRPL
We’re designing for cryptographic agility, supporting multiple NIST-standardized algorithms rather than a single scheme, so XRPL can adapt as the post-quantum landscape matures.
Every decision is being evaluated against XRPL’s real-world performance requirements, because quantum-resistant cryptography only matters if the network stays fast and reliable. And we’re building this transition to be as seamless as possible for every holder, institution, and developer who depends on XRPL.
Big Picture
The key takeaway is that the quantum threat is real, evidenced not only by ongoing improvements to quantum computing hardware and algorithmic resource estimates (e.g. Shor), but also by the fact that NIST has already finalized post-quantum cryptography standards.
What sets XRPL apart is that we’re not starting from zero. The architectural foundations are already in place, the cryptographic expertise is already at work, and the roadmap is already in motion. We’ll continue bringing the full XRPL community along at every step.
