BMIC vs NEAR Protocol 2026 —
Is NEAR Quantum Safe?

1. NEAR's ed25519 Stack — What Is Actually Exposed

NEAR Protocol was designed from the ground up around ed25519 as its canonical signing scheme. Unlike chains that inherited their signing curve from Bitcoin (secp256k1) or Ethereum (secp256k1 ECDSA), NEAR made a deliberate architectural choice to use ed25519 — considered more performant and less implementation-error-prone than secp256k1 in 2018–2020. That choice predated NIST's post-quantum standardisation work reaching maturity. In 2026, ed25519's security still rests entirely on the ECDLP assumption — which a CRQC renders invalid.

1.1 User Account Keys

Every NEAR account holds one or more Access Keys in its on-chain state. Each Access Key record contains a public_key field in the format ed25519:<base58-encoded-pubkey>. These keys are stored explicitly in the NEAR state trie and are queryable by anyone via the RPC endpoint query?request_type=view_access_key_list&account_id=alice.near. No interaction with the account is required to retrieve its complete set of active public keys — they are continuously broadcast as part of the NEAR state. This is a qualitatively different exposure model from Bitcoin UTXO or Ethereum EOA, where public keys are only revealed when a transaction is signed. On NEAR, the public key is always visible.

1.2 Validator and Staking Keys

NEAR validators maintain two distinct ed25519 key pairs:

• Validator account key — controls the staking pool contract: stake deposits, delegation management, unstaking requests, and reward withdrawal. Registered in the staking pool contract state.
• Validator node key — signs block proposals, chunk header endorsements, and BFT consensus messages within the Doomslug/TowerBFT overlay. Registered in the validator_key.json on the node and the on-chain epoch validator roster.

Both key pairs are ed25519. Both are indexed on-chain. A CRQC deriving either key enables independent attacks: the account key enables staking pool drainage; the node key enables validator impersonation and consensus manipulation.

1.3 Chunk Producer Keys

NEAR's Nightshade sharding assigns chunk producers (a subset of validators) to each shard per epoch. Chunk producers sign chunk headers using ed25519 keys — these signatures attest to the validity of all transactions processed within a shard chunk and authorise the cross-shard receipts those transactions generate. Chunk producer public keys are published in the epoch validator roster and are permanently indexed on-chain.

1.4 Rainbow Bridge Relayer Keys

The NEAR ↔ Ethereum Rainbow Bridge uses relayer wallets to submit NEAR block headers to the Ethereum-side bridge contract and Ethereum block headers to the NEAR-side contract. NEAR-side relayers sign with ed25519; Ethereum-side relayers sign with secp256k1. Both are Shor-vulnerable on a CRQC. A forged NEAR block header submitted to the Ethereum-side contract enables fraudulent proof submission that can unlock ETH and ERC-20 tokens without a corresponding NEAR-side lock — a unidirectional quantum drain path across the bridge.

2. Three Quantum Attack Paths on NEAR

Attack Path A — Account Drain via CRQC-Derived Access Key

The most direct attack on any NEAR holder:

1. Adversary snapshots the NEAR state trie (publicly available; full node or archival RPC dump) and extracts all ed25519:<pubkey> access key records for all active accounts.
2. CRQC runs Shor's algorithm on the target account's ed25519 public key, deriving the corresponding private key in polynomial time.
3. Adversary signs a Transfer action from the target account, moving all NEAR to an adversary-controlled wallet.
4. Adversary also signs DeleteKey actions to remove recovery keys, locking the legitimate owner out permanently.

Unlike Ethereum EOA attacks (which require waiting for the target to broadcast a transaction), NEAR account keys are always visible — the attack can be launched on any account at any time once a CRQC is available.

Attack Path B — Cross-Shard Receipt Forgery via Chunk Producer Key

A systemic attack unique to NEAR's Nightshade architecture:

1. Adversary identifies chunk producer keys for the shard responsible for a high-value DeFi contract (e.g. Ref Finance liquidity pool, Burrow lending market, Meta Pool staked NEAR) from the epoch validator roster.
2. CRQC derives the chunk producer's ed25519 private key from its on-chain public key.
3. Adversary forges a cross-shard receipt attesting that a NEAR transfer (e.g. 1,000,000 NEAR) in Shard A was executed, signed with the derived chunk producer key.
4. The forged receipt is valid on Shard B, which credits the adversary's account without any corresponding debit in Shard A — creating unbacked tokens from nothing.
5. Adversary swaps forged credits through Ref Finance or bridges them out via Rainbow Bridge before the forgery is detected.

Attack Path C — Rainbow Bridge Drain via Forged Block Header

1. Adversary CRQC-derives a NEAR-side bridge relayer's ed25519 private key.
2. Adversary constructs a forged NEAR block header containing a fabricated receipt proving a large ETH deposit was locked on the NEAR side.
3. Adversary signs the forged header with the derived relayer key and submits it to the Ethereum-side bridge contract.
4. Ethereum bridge contract accepts the forged proof and releases ETH to the adversary's Ethereum wallet — net effect: ETH drained from the bridge without any corresponding NEAR locked.

3. Harvest-Now-Decrypt-Later — NEAR's 5.5-Year Corpus

The HNDL threat model posits that adversaries harvest cryptographic material now and decrypt it when CRQC becomes available. For NEAR Protocol, the HNDL corpus began accumulating in October 2020 and continues to grow with every block. Crucially, NEAR's named-account model means the entire HNDL corpus is a single RPC snapshot — no chain analysis or UTXO scanning required.

4. Technical Comparison: BMIC vs NEAR Protocol

5. Why NEAR's Named Account Model Is a Unique Quantum Risk Factor

Most blockchain accounts require a spending or signing transaction before their public key becomes visible to external observers. Bitcoin P2PKH addresses reveal the public key only when first spent. Ethereum EOA addresses reveal the public key when the first outbound transaction is signed. Both allow an owner to delay public key exposure by not spending from an address.

NEAR's named account model inverts this property. Access keys are stored as first-class objects in the account state trie. The moment an account is created and funded, its ed25519 public key is written to state and becomes queryable by anyone. There is no equivalent of "unspent but unexposed" — on NEAR, every funded account's public key is continuously broadcast in the global state.

5.1 RPC Harvesting — One Call, Millions of Keys

An adversary building a HNDL library for NEAR does not need to scan transaction history. A single call to a NEAR archival node's EXPERIMENTAL_changes_in_block endpoint — or a complete state dump via view_state across all accounts — retrieves the full set of active ed25519 public keys in one structured operation. Existing NEAR chain indexers (The Graph for NEAR, Pagoda, Pikespeak) already maintain this data in queryable databases — adversaries can harvest a complete NEAR public key corpus from public endpoints without running infrastructure.

5.2 Sub-Account and Contract Admin Keys

NEAR's hierarchical naming system allows sub-accounts (vault.alice.near, dao.protocol.near, admin.defi.near) that inherit the NEAR naming security model. Smart contract accounts also hold ed25519 access keys used by protocol developers and DAOs for contract upgrades, parameter changes, and emergency pauses. All these keys are explicitly stored in the state trie. A CRQC attack on a contract admin key enables malicious contract upgrades without any on-chain governance vote — a direct theft of the protocol upgrade authority.

6. NSM-10 and Institutional Compliance for NEAR

NSM-10 (National Security Memorandum 10, May 2022) mandates that US federal agencies and critical infrastructure operators inventory all quantum-vulnerable cryptographic systems and begin post-quantum migration aligned with NIST standards by Q3 2026. The EU Cybersecurity Agency (ENISA) has issued parallel guidance. By August 2026, these directives are actively enforced.

6.1 Institutional NEAR Exposure

Several categories of institutional market participants hold NEAR or operate on the NEAR network:

• Custodians — regulated custodians holding NEAR on behalf of clients use ed25519 hot wallet keys for operational signing. These keys are material NSM-10 inventory items.
• Validators and staking services — institutional staking providers (Figment, Chorus One, Everstake, Blockdaemon) operate ed25519 validator keys subject to NSM-10 inventorying obligations if they serve US government clients.
• DeFi protocol treasuries — DAO treasuries holding NEAR on the named-account model face the same ed25519 compliance gap as individual holders.
• Bridge operators — Rainbow Bridge relayers operated by Near Inc. or third parties are critical infrastructure nodes subject to NSM-10 audit requirements.

NEAR Foundation has not published a NIST FIPS 203/204/205 migration roadmap. Institutional participants who are NSM-10 compliant and also NEAR holders or operators face an unresolved compliance gap: their NEAR ed25519 key dependencies cannot be remediated without a protocol-level migration that does not currently exist on any published roadmap.

7. How BMIC's Post-Quantum Architecture Works

BMIC was designed from inception with quantum-resistant cryptography as a core requirement — not a post-hoc addition. The architecture implements three complementary NIST standards that together replace every ed25519 and secp256k1 surface that NEAR Protocol currently relies on.

7.1 ML-KEM (FIPS 203) — Key Encapsulation

ML-KEM (Module-Lattice Key Encapsulation Mechanism, standardised as CRYSTALS-Kyber) replaces Diffie-Hellman and ECDH for session key establishment. NEAR Protocol has no equivalent — its transaction layer uses ed25519 for signing but has no published quantum-safe key agreement mechanism for P2P network communications. BMIC's ML-KEM implementation ensures that encrypted communications between wallet and network remain secure even against a CRQC intercepting in-flight traffic.

7.2 ML-DSA (FIPS 204) — Digital Signatures

ML-DSA (Module-Lattice Digital Signature Algorithm, standardised as CRYSTALS-Dilithium) is BMIC's primary signing scheme, replacing ECDSA and ed25519 at the wallet layer. ML-DSA security relies on the Module Learning-With-Errors (MLWE) problem — not solvable by Shor's algorithm. Every BMIC transaction is signed with ML-DSA; no ed25519 or secp256k1 signing key is used in the BMIC wallet's primary signing path.

7.3 SLH-DSA (FIPS 205) — Stateless Hash-Based Signatures

SLH-DSA (Stateless Hash-based Digital Signature Algorithm, standardised as SPHINCS+) provides a second post-quantum signing layer based purely on hash function security — making it robust against both algebraic (Shor) and search (Grover) quantum attacks. BMIC uses SLH-DSA for long-term signing contexts where MLWE security assumptions may be less conservative.

7.4 ERC-4337 Account Abstraction

ERC-4337 allows BMIC wallets to use custom signature verification logic — including ML-DSA and SLH-DSA — without requiring a base-layer Ethereum protocol upgrade. This is a critical deployment advantage: NEAR's ed25519 dependency is embedded in the core protocol and cannot be changed without a network-wide upgrade. BMIC's ERC-4337 architecture allows quantum-safe signatures to be deployed and upgraded at the wallet layer, independently of the Ethereum L1 signing model, providing migration flexibility as post-quantum standards evolve.

8. Frequently Asked Questions

9. Further Quantum Security Reading

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