Performance Analysis of Quantum-Secure Digital Signature Algorithms in Blockchain

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the performance of various quantum-secure digital signature algorithms within a blockchain prototype, highlighting their efficiency and practicality for long-term blockchain security against quantum attacks.

Contribution

It introduces a blockchain prototype supporting multiple post-quantum signature schemes and provides a detailed performance comparison in a blockchain context.

Findings

CRYSTALS-Dilithium, Falcon, and Hawk show varying performance metrics.

Quantum-secure signatures are feasible for blockchain integration.

Performance trade-offs depend on key and signature sizes.

Abstract

The long-term security of public blockchains strictly depends on the hardness assumptions of the underlying digital signature schemes. In the current scenario, most deployed cryptocurrencies and blockchain platforms rely on elliptic-curve cryptography, which is vulnerable to quantum attacks due to Shor's algorithm. Therefore, it is important to understand how post-quantum (PQ) digital signatures behave when integrated into real blockchain systems. This report presents a blockchain prototype that supports multiple quantum-secure signature algorithms, focusing on CRYSTALS-Dilithium, Falcon and Hawk as lattice-based schemes. This report also describes the design of the prototype and discusses the performance metrics, which include key generation, signing, verification times, key sizes and signature sizes. This report covers the problem, background, and experimental methodology, also providing a detailed comparison of quantum-secure signatures in a blockchain context and extending the analysis to schemes such as HAETAE.