Performance Analysis of Quantum-Secure Digital Signature Algorithms in Blockchain

TL;DR

This work addresses the challenge of securing blockchains in the era of quantum computing by evaluating lattice-based post-quantum signatures in a focused blockchain prototype. It implements a swap-enabled single-node blockchain that can run CRYSTALS-Dilithium (ML-DSA), Falcon, Hawk, and, separately, HAETAE, measuring how signature choice affects transaction signing, block verification latency, and storage overhead, with detailed parameter settings such as $n=256$, $q=8380417$ for ML-DSA and $n\in\{512,1024\}$, $q=12289$ for Falcon. The study provides a system-level comparison showing that Falcon and Hawk generally reduce block size and verification time relative to ML-DSA, while ML-DSA offers simplicity and standardisation; HAETAE shows promise in key/signature size reduction but requires full blockchain integration to validate system-level impact. The results inform practical deployment decisions for PQ-secure blockchains, highlighting the trade-offs between security level, data overhead, and verification throughput, and outlining a path toward broader, multi-node experiments and inclusion of additional schemes in future work.

Abstract

The long-term security of public blockchains strictly depends on the hardness assumptions of the underlying digital signature schemes. In the current scenario, most deployed cryptocurrencies and blockchain platforms rely on elliptic-curve cryptography, which is vulnerable to quantum attacks due to Shor's algorithm. Therefore, it is important to understand how post-quantum (PQ) digital signatures behave when integrated into real blockchain systems. This report presents a blockchain prototype that supports multiple quantum-secure signature algorithms, focusing on CRYSTALS-Dilithium, Falcon and Hawk as lattice-based schemes. This report also describes the design of the prototype and discusses the performance metrics, which include key generation, signing, verification times, key sizes and signature sizes. This report covers the problem, background, and experimental methodology, also providing a detailed comparison of quantum-secure signatures in a blockchain context and extending the analysis to schemes such as HAETAE.

Figures (2)

• Figure 1: Average serialized transaction size for each signature scheme and parameter set (1000-transaction block).
• Figure 2: Average key gen, signing and per-transaction verification times for each scheme (logarithmic or linear scale as preferred).