QRL funds University of Manchester research on post-quantum signatures

Quantum Resistant Ledger has awarded a grant to University of Manchester cryptographers to speed up post-quantum signature tools for blockchains and other internet infrastructure. The work focuses on smaller, faster and more practical signature schemes as quantum threats move from theory toward migration deadlines.

Why it matters: - Digital signatures secure blockchain transactions, software updates and TLS certificates, so weaknesses there would ripple across major internet systems. - Current signature schemes such as ECDSA, EdDSA and RSA are vulnerable to a cryptographically relevant quantum computer running Shor's algorithm. - The hardest part of the post-quantum migration is replacing the signature layer without breaking performance, storage and operational tooling. - QRL's funding aims to make post-quantum signatures smaller, faster and more usable for real blockchain deployments.

What happened: - Quantum Resistant Ledger awarded a research grant to the University of Manchester to support post-quantum cryptography work. - The grant supports Dr Bernardo Magri, Dr Tako Boris Fouotsa and Dr Trey Li in the university's Systems Security group in the Department of Computer Science. - QRL announced the grant from Zug, Switzerland, on Oct. 15, 2026. - The researchers will study isogeny-based cryptography, blockchain and post-quantum hardness assumptions.

The details: - Dr Bernardo Magri is the Senior Lecturer in Cryptography and principal investigator. - Dr Tako Boris Fouotsa is the Lecturer in Cryptography and co-investigator. - Dr Trey Li is a Research Fellow and co-investigator. - Magri's work spans blockchain foundations, secure multi-party computation and subversion-resilient cryptography. - Fouotsa focuses on isogeny-based cryptography and has authored several isogeny-based key exchange, encryption and signature schemes. - Fouotsa contributes to SQIsign, described as the most compact post-quantum signature scheme in NIST's additional signatures process. - Li works in arithmetic geometry and quantum computing, with interests in post-quantum cryptography and mathematical physics. - Li originated the Hecke problems, the noisy subset product problem and unknown-coefficient multivariate exponential equations. - The research outputs will be published openly, and reference implementations will be released as open-source code. - The University of Manchester said its goal is to help enable advanced cryptographic functionality that real-world blockchain applications require. - QRL said the collaboration is meant to bridge theoretical post-quantum cryptography and practical blockchain deployment.

Between the lines: - The grant targets infrastructure, not just theory, because the practical barriers to post-quantum adoption now include signature size, bandwidth, storage and wallet tooling. - NIST published its first post-quantum signature standards, ML-DSA and SLH-DSA, in August 2024, but standardization alone does not solve deployment. - The UK's National Cyber Security Centre has set 2035 as the deadline for full migration, with priority systems to move by 2031. - An ML-DSA-87 signature is 4,627 bytes, compared with about 64 bytes for ECDSA, and its public key is 2,592 bytes compared with 33 bytes. - Those size differences create direct costs for block space, bandwidth and node storage on blockchains. - Threshold signing, aggregation and blind signatures are mature for elliptic curves but still immature for post-quantum schemes. - QRL already runs on hash-based XMSS signatures and uses ML-DSA-87 in QRL 2.0, so the company has a direct stake in making post-quantum tools more practical.

What's next: - The Manchester team will continue research on isogeny-based cryptography and post-quantum primitives relevant to blockchain security. - The project will produce open research and open-source reference code. - The work will feed into the broader migration to post-quantum signature infrastructure across blockchains and internet systems. - QRL 2.0 remains on public testnet with proof-of-stake consensus, NIST-approved ML-DSA signatures and EVM-compatible smart contracts written in the Hyperion language.

The bottom line: - QRL is backing academic cryptography work now because the post-quantum signature problem is already an engineering problem, not a distant theoretical one.