Post-Quantum Crypto Finally Gets a Real Use Case

Of all the post-quantum cryptography projects in the crypto industry, only one strikes me as truly relevant right now. It's Arc, Circle’s upcoming blockchain.

This is not the first project of its kind, and not the most advanced. At this stage, it’s still just a project - an idea under development - while there are already working solutions that have been around for years: QRL since 2018, QANplatform since 2023. But the future of all these solutions is uncertain, just like the problem they are trying to solve.

Yes, Google researchers recently suggested that breaking crypto systems with quantum computers may be closer than one previously thought. Technically, that might be true. But is it economically viable? Would the cost outweigh the potential gains? And if such capabilities do emerge, wouldn’t it make more sense to target other parts of the financial system where there is simply more money to be made?

Arc, however, might be where post-quantum cryptography actually takes off. Not because it will be implemented better, but because of Circle’s partners - institutions for which any additional layer of security matters, even if it protects against a fairly abstract threat. Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Visa, Deutsche Bank, AWS - for them, more security is always better. And all of them could find their way onto a new blockchain like this.

No other post-quantum crypto project in the industry has partners who genuinely need it - and are willing to pay for it.