Venom Foundation Says Blockchain Industry Is Not Ready for the Quantum Era

Venom Foundation is putting the blockchain industry on notice over a threat many teams still prefer to ignore: quantum computing. The Abu Dhabi-based blockchain infrastructure company said it has completed an internal post-quantum cryptographic assessment of its network’s signature layer and, in the process, mapped out a transition plan designed to prepare for the day when quantum computers become powerful enough to break widely used encryption methods.

The move places Venom among the first blockchain protocols to publicly evaluate its quantum readiness and present a roadmap for migration, at a time when the industry is still largely focused on short-term scaling, interoperability, and adoption. The warning from Venom is straightforward. The quantum threat is not a distant theoretical problem, the company argues, but a challenge that is already shaping how organizations should secure data today.

While cryptographically relevant quantum computers are still expected to be years away, the company says adversaries can already be collecting encrypted information now with the intention of decrypting it later once quantum systems mature. That so-called “harvest now, decrypt later” risk is one of the central reasons Venom says the industry must start preparing immediately instead of waiting for a breaking point.

“The migration window is now, not when quantum computers arrive,” Christopher Louis Tsu, chief executive officer of Venom Foundation, said in a statement. He added that the assessment was initiated proactively and that waiting for customer demands or regulatory pressure would not be a responsible strategy. In his view, blockchain networks should be prepared before the threat becomes visible to the broader market, not after it has already begun to cause damage.

Pushing for Long-Term Security

According to Venom, its internal security review focused on the parts of the network most exposed to future quantum attacks, especially the digital signature layer and key exchange mechanisms. The company said its hash functions, including SHA-256 and SHA-512, remain resilient for now, since Grover’s algorithm would only reduce their effective security rather than completely break them. The more pressing issue, Venom said, lies in the network’s Ed25519-based signature layer, which would be vulnerable to Shor’s algorithm in a sufficiently advanced quantum environment.

To address that, Venom has built a transition roadmap centered on post-quantum algorithms. The company said it is targeting ML-DSA, also known as Dilithium, for digital signatures and ML-KEM, known as Kyber, for key exchange. Both were finalized in August 2024 as part of NIST’s post-quantum cryptography standards, and Venom said its roadmap aligns with those standards as well as broader migration guidance from U.S. authorities.

The company also emphasized that its next step will be an independent third-party audit, which it says is consistent with recommendations to begin with an internal assessment before bringing in external reviewers. For Venom, the point is not just to secure its own network, but to make quantum preparedness a normal part of blockchain operations rather than a niche concern.

That message extends beyond its own ecosystem. Venom is urging enterprise clients, financial institutions, government agencies, and other Layer-1 blockchain protocols to carry out their own post-quantum assessments. It says the first and most practical step is building a Cryptographic Bill of Materials, or CBOM, to inventory all systems that depend on algorithms such as RSA, ECC, and Diffie-Hellman, which are expected to be vulnerable in a post-quantum world.

Venom’s broader argument is that the industry has moved too slowly because the problem has not yet become urgent enough for most teams. No blockchain-specific regulatory requirements are forcing immediate action, migrations on live networks are difficult and often require coordination across validators, and deep PQC expertise remains limited. In that environment, Venom says, many projects still see quantum risk as a problem for the future rather than a security issue already taking shape.

The company believes that view will not hold for long. Tsu said quantum-resistance verification is likely to become a standard requirement in enterprise and government procurement within the next few years, making early preparation a competitive advantage as well as a security necessity. For now, the company’s message is clear: the industry should not wait for quantum computing to arrive before treating it like a real security issue.

Founded in Abu Dhabi, Venom Foundation describes itself as a fintech and blockchain infrastructure company focused on high-performance, secure, and regulatory-compliant systems. The network claims throughput of up to 150,000 transactions per second, minimal fees, and 99.99% uptime, with support for DeFi, NFT, gaming, and enterprise applications.