Blockchain's First Fully Post-Quantum Transaction Just Settled on Mainnet. Here Is the Hash.
On QoreChain mainnet (qorechain-vladi), a 1,000 QOR transfer to a wallet created in Keplr is the first mainnet transaction to settle on a fully post-quantum foundation: an ML-DSA-87 (Dilithium-5) signature on the transaction, ML-KEM-1024 as the chain's key-encapsulation primitive, and SHAKE-256 as its live default hash, all finalized NIST standards. Here is why that is a first, and how any developer can verify it byte for byte.
Rolle, Switzerland, July 04, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On July 2nd 2026, a transfer of 1,000 QOR settled on QoreChain mainnet (qorechain-vladi) on a fully post-quantum cryptographic foundation. The claim is precise, and deliberately so: this is not merely a post-quantum signature, which several networks already have, but the first live mainnet transaction to settle on a foundation that is post-quantum across all three primitive classes at once, all finalized standards from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. The transaction itself carries an ML-DSA-87 (Dilithium-5, FIPS 204) signature and is recorded under the chain's SHAKE-256 (FIPS 202) hash, and the chain's key-encapsulation primitive is ML-KEM-1024 (FIPS 203). Classical fallback is disabled on the transaction path. The transaction is public, and every claim below is checkable on the explorer at explore.qore.network.
For a technical audience, the phrase that matters is "full stack." Post-quantum signatures have appeared on other networks. What has not shipped before, to the team's knowledge, is a live mainnet transaction that settles on a foundation where the signature, the key-encapsulation primitive, and the hash function are all post-quantum and all drawn from the finalized NIST standards, produced from a standard self-custody wallet rather than a laboratory harness. The receiving wallet was created in Keplr, a wallet anyone can install.
Why this is a first, and why it is not the others
Being specific is what makes the claim defensible. Post-quantum work has been happening across the industry, and this milestone does not erase it. It clears a higher and narrower bar: one live mainnet where a settled transaction rests on all three finalized NIST post-quantum primitive classes together, a signature (ML-DSA, FIPS 204), key encapsulation (ML-KEM, FIPS 203), and a hash foundation (SHAKE-256, FIPS 202), at NIST Security Level 5, with classical fallback closed on the transaction path. To displace the claim, another chain has to show the same three, live, at once. Here is where the closest efforts stand, by their own public materials.
Algorand executed a mainnet Falcon-signed transaction in November 2025 and pioneered Falcon-signed State Proofs in 2022, and deserves credit for both. Falcon, however, is a different scheme that NIST is standardizing separately as FN-DSA (FIPS 206), not ML-DSA (FIPS 204), and Algorand's own materials note that its consensus and built-in transactions still use Ed25519 and that this does not provide full quantum security at present. There is no ML-KEM key encapsulation and no SHAKE-256 hash foundation. That is a post-quantum signature, not a post-quantum stack.
QRL has authenticated transactions with hash-based XMSS one-time signatures since launch, which is genuine and early post-quantum history. It is also a single hash-based signature family: no ML-DSA lattice signature, no ML-KEM key encapsulation, and not the FIPS 203, 204, and 202 combination.
BNB Chain has announced migration work moving transaction signatures and consensus votes to ML-DSA-44 with pqSTARK aggregation. By its own migration table, the P2P handshake move to ML-KEM and the KZG commitment replacement are still pending, so the key-encapsulation leg is not yet live, and ML-DSA-44 sits at NIST Level 2 against QoreChain's Level 5 ML-DSA-87 and ML-KEM-1024. That is post-quantum migration in progress, not a settled transaction on a completed three-primitive foundation.
Abelian has run lattice-based signatures and a key-encapsulation mechanism on mainnet since 2022, using primitives inspired by CRYSTALS-Dilithium and Kyber rather than the finalized NIST FIPS 203 and 204 algorithms. QoreChain's distinction is the finalized NIST standards specifically.
The common thread is simple to check: finalized NIST standards, all three primitive classes together as the live foundation, Security Level 5, and a publicly verifiable settled transaction on a named mainnet. Each of the efforts above is missing at least one of those, which is exactly why QoreChain frames this as the first fully post-quantum transaction stack rather than the first post-quantum transaction.
What the transaction proves at the protocol level
QoreChain enforces post-quantum cryptography by default on its Cosmos transaction path. The x/pqc module runs with hybrid_signature_mode set to required and allow_classical_fallback set to false. In practice, every cosmos-path transaction must carry both a classical secp256k1 signature and a Dilithium-5 signature; a classical-only transaction from a PQC account is rejected. The only bootstrap exemptions are genesis gentxs at height 0 and the PQC key-registration messages themselves, so an account can register its first key. This 1,000 QOR transfer is a cosmos-path bank transaction, which is why it carries the hybrid post-quantum signature.
A design choice worth stating plainly, because it is intentional and built for developers rather than a gap: the enforced hybrid post-quantum requirement currently applies to the Cosmos transaction path, while the EVM lane authenticates on a separate eth_secp256k1 path (the QoreChain EVM Engine path). Keeping the EVM path byte-compatible with the Ethereum standard is the point. It means existing wallets, libraries, and tooling work on QoreChain unchanged, which lowers the barrier for Solidity teams and makes it far easier to connect QoreChain to the wider EVM ecosystem and to other chains. Compatibility is what lets builders arrive without a rewrite. Post-quantum signing for the EVM path is already developed, and standardizing it across the EVM lane is the next step, so builders keep that compatibility and gain the same quantum-safe protection. Today, the enforced end-to-end guarantee lives on the Cosmos path, which is where this 1,000 QOR transfer settled.
The post-quantum signature travels as a transaction extension with the type URL /qorechain.pqc.v1.PQCHybridSignature. For Dilithium-5, that is a 4,627-byte signature bound to a 2,592-byte public key, both at NIST Security Level 5, the highest standardized category. Verification is deterministic and reproducible across every validator, which is what makes the result auditable rather than anecdotal.
How to verify it yourself
Open the transaction at explore.qore.network/tx/4E49D57F86FEC8851CDC34811B4C80FDB24F4C253ABE15D25C05B7A27F2B7F1F. Confirm the network is qorechain-vladi. Inspect the signature set and confirm the presence of the PQCHybridSignature extension alongside the classical signature. Query the live enforcement mode with qorechaind query pqc params and confirm hybrid_signature_mode is required. Developers who want to reproduce the primitives can use the open-source qorechain-pqc library, which exposes ML-DSA, ML-KEM, and SHAKE-256 through one byte-compatible API across six languages (JavaScript and TypeScript, Rust, Go, C, Python, and Java), or attach a cosignature directly with qorechaind tx pqc cosign.
Heavy cryptography, and it barely registers
Post-quantum primitives are big. A Dilithium-5 signature is 4,627 bytes where an ECDSA signature is on the order of 64 to 72, and every cosmos-path transaction on QoreChain carries one, alongside ML-KEM key material and SHAKE-256 hashing. Conventional wisdom says that has to be slow.
It is not, and the numbers are measured rather than modeled. On a six-validator devnet in June 2026, Dilithium-5 verification took about 53 microseconds and signing about 110 microseconds, so the post-quantum check adds on the order of 53 microseconds to a transaction. Blocks came in at about 1.4 seconds (mean 1.376s), a bank transfer settled in a single block in about 1.2 seconds, and consensus stayed byte-for-byte deterministic across all six validators with zero panics. Put plainly, the post-quantum layer is measured in microseconds while blocks are measured in seconds. It does not register.
Throughput is bounded by block space, not by cryptography. The tested block parameters leave headroom on the order of 64,000 transactions per second at typical transaction sizes, and a multi-account test placed 40 concurrent transactions into a single block with no contention. That is the takeaway for a developer: QoreChain puts a full post-quantum signature on every cosmos-path transaction and still runs in the performance class of the fastest modern Layer 1s, because the quantum-safe primitives cost microseconds, not seconds.
The post-quantum baseline is chain-wide, not per-transaction
This transaction is a visible instance of a property that holds across the protocol. Cross-chain bridge attestations and state commitments are signed with Dilithium-5, and the x/multilayer module requires post-quantum aggregate signatures on every anchor submission, with ML-KEM commitments protecting relayer key exchange. SHAKE-256 has been the default application hash since v3.1.73, backing Merkle hashing and cross-layer attestations. The result is quantum resistance that extends from a single transfer out to the connections between chains, rather than a single retrofitted signature.
More that developers can check on the same chain
QoreChain is a triple-VM Layer 1. The QoreChain EVM Engine (EVM chain ID 9801 on mainnet, 9800 on testnet), CosmWasm, and a Solana-compatible SVM run on one chain with shared accounts and balances, and the x/crossvm module allows atomic calls across all three within a single transaction, with the EVM and cosmos signing paths as described above. Consensus is optimized by PRISM, the network's reinforcement-learning layer in x/rlconsensus, operating behind a circuit breaker that caps any single parameter change. Network fees follow a fixed split of 37 percent to validators, 30 percent burned, 20 percent to the treasury, 10 percent to stakers, and 3 percent to light nodes, and QOR is a fixed-supply asset under the canonical tokenomics model. Each of these is queryable from a node or visible on the explorer.
Why it matters now
The urgency is not the arrival date of a quantum computer. It is the Harvest Now, Decrypt Later strategy, in which adversaries record encrypted data today to decrypt once the hardware exists. A public ledger keeps its history permanently, so any chain not post-quantum from the start leaves that history exposed in hindsight, and migrating later protects only what is signed after the switch. QoreChain's position is that a chain should be born with the full post-quantum baseline, and that the claim should be verifiable on-chain by anyone who cares to check. This transaction is the first place to check.
About QoreChain
QoreChain is a quantum-safe, AI-native Layer 1 with a triple virtual machine execution environment (EVM, CosmWasm, SVM), built on the Cosmos SDK foundation and applying NIST-standard post-quantum cryptography across the protocol stack. QoreChain Association is registered in Rolle, Switzerland (CHE-484.963.998), operates under the Swiss DLT Act, and holds a FINMA no-action letter classifying QOR as a utility token. Mainnet is live. Documentation is at docs.qorechain.io and the explorer is at explore.qore.network.
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Florin Marin PR Qore Chain Association press-at-qorechain.io
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