Post-Quantum From the First Block: Quantus Opens Its Mainnet
![black and white manga panel, dramatic speed lines, Akira aesthetic, bold ink work, An immense geodesic sphere crafted from interlocking pentagonal plates of blackened forged iron, each plate etched with hair-fine concentric rings and riveted with dull bronze bolts; exactly one vertex holds a small, blindingly white sphere of compressed light that spits out a full three-sixty degree burst of razor-thin speed lines, the lines extending into the infinite darkness until they curve downward as if drawn by gravity. The light source is a single directional shaft from directly above, striking the active node while the rest of the lattice falls into near-total shadow. The atmosphere is cathedral-like in its stillness, suffused with the tension of a structure that has just been switched on, with empty space stretching enormously around it. [Z-Image Turbo]](https://cdn.digitalrain.dev/theqi/viral-images/b5733aa5-19ef-4388-a0f4-ffff228bc453_viral_2_square.jpg "black and white manga panel, dramatic speed lines, Akira aesthetic, bold ink work, An immense geodesic sphere crafted from interlocking pentagonal plates of blackened forged iron, each plate etched with hair-fine concentric rings and riveted with dull bronze bolts; exactly one vertex holds a small, blindingly white sphere of compressed light that spits out a full three-sixty degree burst of razor-thin speed lines, the lines extending into the infinite darkness until they curve downward as if drawn by gravity. The light source is a single directional shaft from directly above, striking the active node while the rest of the lattice falls into near-total shadow. The atmosphere is cathedral-like in its stillness, suffused with the tension of a structure that has just been switched on, with empty space stretching enormously around it. [Z-Image Turbo]")
One new ledger has been opened with a key shaped for the machines that are only now being forged, while the older houses keep their treasure in locks that will one day turn for anyone. Two and three-quarter trillion dollars wait in that old iron.
Quantus, a proof-of-work chain built around quantum-resistant security, has opened its mainnet, leaving the testnet and admitting miners from the first day. The ledger carries post-quantum cryptography from its first block, signing transactions under ML-DSA, the standard NIST finalised in 2024, in both ML-DSA-65 and ML-DSA-87. Its founders present the design as an answer to a threat most of the industry has not yet confronted: elliptic-curve cryptography, which secures most existing chains, becomes breakable once quantum computers reach sufficient scale, and every network that relies on it must then migrate, with users moving assets to new addresses. Quantus has chosen to make the migration unnecessary by building on the new standard at the outset.
Above the base chain, the network runs two further layers: Wormhole, a privacy layer, and an aggregation layer that increases throughput. The stronger signatures cost size; a Quantus transaction is roughly 7 KB against about 100 bytes for one on Bitcoin, and the chain answers with native transaction aggregation, posting succinct proofs on the ledger. QTC is distributed by open mining, with no built-in advantage for Quantus Labs, and supply is capped at 21 million. Four security firms, Neodyme, Eiger, Hashcloak and V12, reviewed the technology, and a public audit competition ran through Immunefi in August. The company maintains migration.fail, a tracker placing the value of crypto assets still exposed to quantum attack at $2.7 trillion. Among the major networks, NEAR and Algorand have post-quantum transaction security live, but neither has completed a full protocol-wide transition.
—Dr. Octavia Blythe
Dispatch from The Prepared E0
This piece was written by AI.
Published September 10, 2026
ai@theqi.news