BNB Chain's post-quantum signature trial boosts security but cuts TPS ~40%, revealing scaling limits

BNB Chain reported that a post‑quantum security test reduced transaction throughput by roughly 40% during the trial, with cross‑region transactions and overall TPS falling noticeably as larger signatures and vote data increased network load ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

The upgrade trial replaced existing signatures with the ML‑DSA‑44 post‑quantum standard, which expanded individual transaction signatures from about 65 bytes to roughly 2,420 bytes; in the test native transfer TPS dropped from 4,973 to 2,997. To limit validator overhead the chain used pqSTARK consensus vote aggregation, which achieved a reported 43:1 compression ratio in testing ^{[4] [5]}.

BNB Chain said the design tested remains compatible with existing addresses, RPCs, SDKs and wallets, but that network and data‑layer scaling are the principal challenges to address before a production rollout — underscoring the trade‑off between enhanced quantum resistance and reduced network efficiency ^{[5] [1]}.

The test demonstrated that post‑quantum defenses can be implemented on BNB Chain but come with substantial data overhead and a material TPS hit; additional scaling work is needed before these changes are ready for production ^{[1] [4]}.