LayerZero’s Aerie Aggregates 32,768 Post-Quantum Signatures in 0.65 Seconds

LayerZero Labs, a16z Crypto research, Carnegie Mellon University and Imperial College London introduced Aerie, a system that aggregated 32,768 post-quantum signatures in 0.65 seconds, offering a path toward post-quantum blockchain consensus.

The benchmark used Falcon-512 signatures and ran on a MacBook Pro with an Apple M4 Max chip. It used 16 CPU cores, no GPU and about 2.1 GiB of peak memory.

In a comparison with Orthus, Aerie generated proofs about 1.5 times faster, verified them 38 times faster and produced proofs about 1.7 times smaller. The system is built on Akita, a lattice-based polynomial commitment scheme introduced earlier.

Aerie also supports aggregation of ML-DSA signatures, which were standardized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Performance figures for ML-DSA are expected later.

The research aims to give blockchains a way to reach low-latency, post-quantum-secure consensus without dedicated hardware.