Hardy Index Quantum readiness benchmark

Chain profile

Avalanche

AVAX Exposed

Signs with ECDSA on secp256k1 across its chains, with no published post-quantum roadmap found at the time of writing.

Is Avalanche quantum-safe?

No. Avalanche secures accounts with ECDSA on the secp256k1 curve across its C-Chain, X-Chain and P-Chain, and a sufficiently large quantum computer would break it. We could not find a published post-quantum roadmap, a named replacement scheme, or a research programme from Avalanche or Ava Labs at the time of writing. That absence is the finding, and it is worth stating plainly rather than softening: a chain with no published position has not yet begun the work that the chains ranked above it have started. Avalanche's subnet architecture means individual subnets can in principle adopt their own signature rules, which is a genuine structural flexibility, but we found no evidence of that being used for post-quantum signatures.

Where we are making a judgement call Tier 5 records a published position, or rather the absence of one. We found no roadmap, named scheme or research programme for Avalanche, and its signatures on mainnet today are quantum-vulnerable. That is a finding about what Avalanche has published, not a judgement of its engineering, and not a claim that no internal work exists. If Avalanche publishes a post-quantum position, the primary source is the fastest way to move this row.

At a glance

On mainnet today

ECDSA on secp256k1 across the C-Chain, X-Chain and P-Chain

Post-quantum scheme

None selected. No post-quantum scheme was found in published Avalanche material.

NIST standard

None adopted

Readiness tier

Tier 5: Exposed. The signatures securing funds on mainnet today are quantum-vulnerable, and no public post-quantum plan, proposal or research programme addressing them could be found.

Score breakdown

Each dimension scored 0 to 10. The weight beside it is its share of the total score.
Signature scheme 0 30% Deployment stage 1 25% NIST alignment 0 15% Migration path 2 15% Exposure 2 10% Verification 6 5%
Show the weighted arithmetic and the sourced note for each dimension
No. Dimension Score Weight Contribution
1 Signature scheme 0 30% 0.0
2 Deployment stage 1 25% 2.5
3 NIST alignment 0 15% 0.0
4 Migration path 2 15% 3.0
5 Exposure 2 10% 2.0
6 Verification 6 5% 3.0
Hardy Score 10.5

1 Signature scheme 0/10, weighted 30%

Band 0: Classical signatures only on mainnet, with nothing post-quantum protecting live funds. Short-lived devnets and one-off benchmarks sit here: they demonstrate research rather than something a user can hold keys on.

Avalanche uses ECDSA on secp256k1 across its primary network chains. Nothing post-quantum protects AVAX or assets on Avalanche today. source

2 Deployment stage 1/10, weighted 25%

Band 1: Tier 5: Exposed.

Tier 5: Exposed. Avalanche signs with ECDSA on secp256k1 and we found no published roadmap, named scheme or research programme, which is the bottom rung of the spine: quantum-vulnerable signatures and no public post-quantum plan. source

3 NIST alignment 0/10, weighted 15%

Band 0 to 2: No named post-quantum scheme, or a proprietary scheme with no public cryptanalysis.

No post-quantum scheme has been named or selected, so there is nothing to align with a NIST standard. source

Placement in the band The floor of the band rather than a 1 or a 2: no scheme has been named at all, as distinct from a scheme named without commitment, so there is nothing whatever to align against a standard.

4 Migration path 2/10, weighted 15%

Band 0 to 2: No agreed migration path, or the proposals on the table would strand or freeze holder funds.

No migration plan exists. Avalanche's subnet architecture does give it real optionality, because a subnet can define its own validation rules without the primary network changing, which is a mechanism a future migration could use. No such use has been published. source

Placement in the band A 2 rather than a 0: subnet architecture is a real mechanism a future migration could use without the primary network changing. It goes no higher because no such use has been published and no plan exists.

5 Exposure 2/10, weighted 10%

Band 0 to 2: Public keys are exposed for effectively all accounts, or a large, measured share of total supply sits in exposed addresses.

C-Chain addresses are hashes of public keys in the Ethereum style, so a funded account that has never transacted keeps its key private. In practice nearly all economically active accounts have signed and published their keys. source

Placement in the band At the top of the band rather than a 0 or a 1: the hashed-address model protects never-transacted accounts, a structural advantage the floor of this band lacks, though almost no active supply still benefits from it.

6 Verification 6/10, weighted 5%

Band 6 to 8: Open source with public review or a named third-party audit of the relevant component.

AvalancheGo is open source, so the signature scheme is directly verifiable from the code. There is no post-quantum claim to verify, which is neither a strength nor a failure of verification, simply an absence. source

Placement in the band The floor of the band: AvalancheGo is open source so the signature scheme is directly verifiable, but there is no post-quantum claim to review and no audit of one, which is what a 7 or an 8 credits.

The deployment dimension is not a separate judgement. It is Tier 5 expressed as a number. See the tier mapping.

How it compares

All 31 rated chains on the 0 to 100 scale. Avalanche is marked. Select any point to open that profile.
Avalanche 10.5

Nearest chains in the ranking

The 9 chains Avalanche sits among, out of 31 rated. The last column is the gap in Hardy points from Avalanche.

Rank Chain Tier Hardy vs AVAX
23 Internet Computer 5: Exposed 14.5 +4.0
24 TON 5: Exposed 13.0 +2.5
25 Litecoin 5: Exposed 12.5 +2.0
26 Bittensor 5: Exposed 11.0 +0.5
27 Dogecoin 5: Exposed 11.0 +0.5
28 Avalanche this chain 5: Exposed 10.5
29 Cronos 5: Exposed 8.5 -2.0
30 MemeCore 5: Exposed 8.5 -2.0
31 Hyperliquid 5: Exposed 7.0 -3.5

Roadmap

  1. No published position proposed

    No post-quantum roadmap, named scheme or research programme was found from Avalanche or Ava Labs at the time of writing. source

Exposure

Exposure measures how much of the chain's value already sits behind a public key that an attacker can record today and break later. This is the part of the threat that a future upgrade cannot undo.

Avalanche's C-Chain follows Ethereum's address model, deriving an address from a hash of the public key, so an account funded but never spent from has not revealed its key. The protection ends at first signature. Because the C-Chain carries the overwhelming majority of Avalanche's activity and value, and because active accounts sign frequently, the practical position is that most economically meaningful AVAX sits behind a key that is already published on-chain and can be collected today against a future quantum computer.

What this rating means for you

If you hold Avalanche

Avalanche runs quantum-vulnerable signatures with no published post-quantum plan that we could find. Nothing here is urgent today, and there is also nothing scheduled to change it.

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Questions

Is Avalanche quantum-safe?

No. Avalanche uses ECDSA on the secp256k1 curve across its chains, which a sufficiently large quantum computer would break. We found no published post-quantum roadmap or named replacement scheme at the time of writing.

Does Avalanche have a post-quantum plan?

None that we could find. We searched for a roadmap, a named scheme, a research programme and a testnet implementation, and found no published position from Avalanche or Ava Labs. If one exists and we have missed it, sending us the primary source is the fastest way to correct this profile.

Could Avalanche subnets adopt post-quantum signatures independently?

In principle yes, and that is a real structural advantage. A subnet can define its own validation rules without the primary network changing, which would let a post-quantum subnet exist without a network-wide fork. We found no evidence of this being used for post-quantum signatures, so it counts as optionality rather than progress.

Why does Avalanche score above zero at all?

Because two dimensions measure things other than post-quantum deployment. Avalanche scores on exposure, since its address model hashes public keys rather than publishing them directly, and on verification, since the client is open source and the cryptography can be checked from the code.

Sources

  1. AvalancheGo, the Avalanche node implementation Ava Labs (GitHub) · primary · checked 12 August 2026
  2. FIPS 204: Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Standard (ML-DSA) NIST · primary · checked 12 August 2026
  3. Safeguarding cryptocurrency by disclosing quantum vulnerabilities responsibly Google Research · primary · checked 12 August 2026
Cite this rating

A rating is only true as of the day it was reviewed, so both forms below carry the review date and the methodology version. If you are quoting the score, quote those too.

Plain text

The Hardy Index (2026). Avalanche: quantum readiness assessment. Hardy Score 10.5 of 100, Tier 5: Exposed. Methodology v1.4. Reviewed 2 October 2026. https://hardyindex.com/chains/avalanche

BibTeX 
@misc{hardyindex_avalanche_2026,
  author       = {{The Hardy Index}},
  title        = {Avalanche: quantum readiness assessment},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://hardyindex.com/chains/avalanche}},
  note         = {Hardy Score 10.5 of 100, Tier 5: Exposed. Methodology v1.4},
  urldate      = {2026-10-02}
}

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This is a security-readiness assessment, not investment advice.