One Type of Post-Quantum Cryptography Is Most Popular. Why Is Crypto Trying Out Three?

Watch on YouTube ↗  |  August 25, 2026 at 16:21  |  1:02:58  |  Unchained (Chopping Block)
Speakers
Ilia Polosukhin — Co-Founder, Near Protocol
Charles Guillemet — CTO, Ledger

Summary

Laura Shin hosts Illia Polosukhin and Charles Guillemet to discuss crypto's post-quantum cryptography migration. They explain how NEAR and Ledger are implementing NIST post-quantum algorithms and why different chains are choosing different standards. The conversation focuses on migration tradeoffs, hardware support, and what Bitcoin should do with unmigrated coins.

  • Quantum algorithm improvements and AI are accelerating post-quantum migration urgency.
  • NEAR has mainnet post-quantum signature support and aims to secure assets across multiple chains.
  • Ledger has added ML-DSA and ML-KEM support and plans next-generation secure elements.
  • Crypto is fragmenting across ML-DSA, hash-based, and Falcon post-quantum standards.
  • Ethereum and Bitcoin lean hash-based, while Solana is expected to choose Falcon for latency.
  • Bitcoin must decide how to handle unmigrated coins, with options including doing nothing, freezing, or tail emission.
  • Charles prefers tail emission to avoid market shock and fund miner security, while Illia sees freezing as more likely.
Ideas
Charles Guillemet CTO, Ledger 0:00
Bitcoin quantum fork may tail-emit coins
Bitcoin faces a quantum migration fork: doing nothing risks attackers stealing unmigrated coins, creating a liquidity and market shock; freezing them is a private property problem and cuts effective supply from 21 million to about 16 million; freezing and tail-emitting unmigrated coins of 4-5 million BTC avoids a market shock and helps fund Bitcoin's long-term miner security budget. Charles prefers tail emission, while Illia sees freezing as the more likely outcome.
BTC MED
Ilia Polosukhin Co-Founder, Near Protocol 6:04
NEAR leads post-quantum blockchain migration
NEAR was designed with an account model that separates addresses from cryptography, making it easy to add post-quantum access keys without a hard fork. It became the first major blockchain with mainnet post-quantum signature support, allows users to secure assets on 30+ other chains through NEAR Intents and MPC, and is working with Ledger to get hardware support, giving NEAR a head start in post-quantum migration.
NEAR HIGH
Charles Guillemet CTO, Ledger 24:43
Algorand uses NIST-standard post-quantum cryptography
Algorand and NEAR are the two major blockchains using ML-DSA, the NIST-standard post-quantum algorithm that the entire non-blockchain world is converging on. ML-DSA offers smaller signatures and enables multi-party computation, giving Algorand a technical post-quantum advantage relative to chains choosing hash-based or Falcon routes.
ALGO MED
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This Unchained (Chopping Block) video, published August 25, 2026, features Charles Guillemet, Ilia Polosukhin discussing BTC, NEAR, ALGO. 3 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.

Speakers: Charles Guillemet, Ilia Polosukhin  · Tickers: BTC, NEAR, ALGO