StarkWare lays out a three-phase plan to make Starknet quantum-resistant — and calls it crypto's 'strongest'

StarkWare has published a post-quantum roadmap for its Starknet layer-2 network, a three-phase plan to strip out the elliptic-curve cryptography that quantum computers could one day break, according to a statement the company shared with The Block on Tuesday, June 30.

The mechanics, per StarkWare's statement: Phase one replaces Pedersen hashing with BLAKE2 across state commitments, contract addresses and network configuration, and adds post-quantum consensus signatures such as Falcon-512. Phase two builds migration tooling so existing ("legacy") contracts can move over. Phase three tackles the parts that stay tied to Ethereum — bridge syscalls and blob data availability — which StarkWare notes depend on Ethereum's own post-quantum transition, something outside StarkWare's control.

The company frames a head start for itself: it says Starknet's zero-knowledge STARK proofs already lean on hash-based cryptography that is "post-quantum secure by design," an "architectural advantage" over chains built on elliptic curves. StarkWare says the plan could make the network quantum-ready "within months," though it gives no dated milestones.

CEO Eli Ben-Sasson argued the tools to secure digital assets against quantum threats already exist, and that remaining exposure is a matter of "inaction rather than technical limitations." He coined "elliptical illusion" for what he called misplaced confidence that elliptic-curve blockchains — the signature scheme underpinning Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana — will stay secure without major changes. The roadmap follows an earlier, separate proposal from StarkWare researcher Avihu Mordechai Levy for quantum-safe Bitcoin transactions ("QSB") using hash-based Lamport signatures, which Levy reported achieves roughly 118-bit second-preimage resistance under a quantum threat model without a soft fork.

Key facts

• Three-phase roadmap: BLAKE2 hashing + Falcon-512 signatures (phase 1); contract migration tooling (phase 2); Ethereum-linked dependencies (phase 3) — source: StarkWare statement via The Block, June 30, 2026.
• StarkWare's claim: network "quantum-ready within months"; no specific dates given — StarkWare via The Block.
• Separate QSB proposal by StarkWare's Avihu Mordechai Levy: ~118-bit second-preimage resistance, no soft fork, within Bitcoin's 201-opcode / 10,000-byte script limits — reported by Levy, per The Block.

The real-world read

Almost everything here traces to a single statement StarkWare "shared with The Block" — a company announcement about its own product, not an independent assessment. The superlatives ("strongest to date," "safe haven for funds") and the coined "elliptical illusion" are marketing framing from the vendor, and the swipe at "industry stubbornness" positions StarkWare above rivals it doesn't name. Discount all of that accordingly. The substance — BLAKE2, Falcon-512, hash-based STARKs — is real, named cryptography, but "quantum-ready within months" carries no dated milestones, no external audit, and no working migration tooling yet demonstrated. Note too that StarkWare's own phase three concedes Starknet can't be fully quantum-safe until Ethereum completes its transition — a dependency the "strongest roadmap" billing glides past. No timeline exists for large-scale quantum computers capable of breaking elliptic-curve crypto; the threat is real but not imminent, and this is one project's plan to address it, corroborated by no independent source here.

This is news coverage, not financial or security advice.