Quantum computers pose an existential threat to modern cryptography. Realm is built to withstand it.
The Threat to ECDSA
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and virtually all modern blockchains rely on Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) to secure user funds. Shor's algorithm, running on a sufficiently powerful quantum computer, can derive the private key from a public key in polynomial time.
Once this happens, every wallet with a revealed public key (i.e., anyone who has ever made a transaction) is compromised.
Why Dilithium-3?
We chose CRYSTALS-Dilithium (specifically the NIST Level 3 parameter set) as our primary signature scheme for three key reasons:
- NIST Standardization: Selected by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology as the primary algorithm for digital signatures.
- Performance: Dilithium offers fast verification times, crucial for high-throughput blockchains.
- Strong Security Guarantees: Based on the hardness of lattice problems (Module-LWE and Module-SIS), which are believed to be resistant to both classical and quantum attacks.
