Cardano Proposal Would Add Post-Quantum Signature Verification to Plutus

Cardano has an open proposal to add post-quantum signature verification to Plutus smart contracts, a change that would require a hard fork if adopted. A separate draft seeks a shared technical baseline for stablecoins built under the network’s programmable-token framework. Both efforts remain under review.

Quantova Inc.’s CIP-0206 candidate would add Plutus functions to verify ML-DSA and SLH-DSA signatures. It was labeled a CIP-0206 candidate Oct. 28. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published the algorithms as FIPS 204 and FIPS 205 in 2024. ML-DSA is module-lattice-based, while SLH-DSA uses stateless hash-based signatures.

The proposed checks would run inside Plutus smart contracts. They do not cover changing the signatures used by Cardano wallets or accounts, keeping the proposal focused on contract-level verification.

Adding the functions and their cost model to Plutus would affect its consensus-critical evaluator, making a hard fork necessary. Cardano’s ledger and Plutus maintainers would handle implementation. The proposal remains open and gives no activation date.

The stablecoin work is a draft Cardano Problem Statement opened Sept. 10. It asks stablecoin issuers and infrastructure providers to help define a shared technical baseline for tokens built under CIP-0113, with the aim of reducing repeated integration work.

The draft’s scope remains under discussion, including whether it should focus only on stablecoins and how it relates to a separate effort on token-feature discoverability. It does not establish a final standard, name participating issuers or set a deployment schedule.

CIP-0113 went live on Cardano mainnet Oct. 7, giving issuers a framework for attaching rules to programmable tokens. Those controls do not apply to the native Cardano (ADA) asset. TokenPost previously covered CIP-0113’s mainnet activation.

A governance metadata issue opened Oct. 21 asks how CIP-0008 signing should appear in governance schemas. CIP-108 continues to define CIP-0008 as a witness option, with the discussion focused on how the related schemas fit together.