Dilithion

Is Dilithion quantum-safe?

Where we are making a judgement call Dilithion qualifies on the deployment test, a post-quantum signature running on its mainnet, and its size plays no part in the score. The current chain began on 28 January 2026, nine months before this review, after a reset in January that invalidated the coins and wallets of a soft launch two weeks earlier. Three readings are ours and are stated with what the other reading gives. One: Dilithion names its scheme CRYSTALS-Dilithium3, which could mean the pre-standard round-three scheme; we score it as FIPS 204 ML-DSA-65 because the code and the on-chain signature size both show that, and a reading of the name alone would put NIST at 7 and the score at 89.0. Two: exposure is 9 for the 160-bit address hash; a 10 gives 94.5. Three: migration is 8 rather than the 9 a chain with nothing outstanding could hold, because of that reset and the emergency consensus releases since; a 9 gives 95.0. Separately from the score, the project holds two kinds of standing control. Since height 40,000 registering a new miner identity requires attestations from three of four seed nodes whose keys are fixed in the node source, nodes Dilithion says it operates, so the project can decline to admit new miners. And 2% of every block subsidy is paid by consensus to two project addresses, a dev fund and a developer reward. This profile covers the DIL chain; DilV, a separate chain from the same team that shares the explorer, is not rated here.

At a glance

Cryptography in use

• Account signatures ML-DSA ML-DSA-65 Mainnet, mandatory Read through the explorer API on 23 October 2026: the spend in block 110,588 has a 5,265-byte scriptSig, a 2-byte length, a 3,309-byte signature, a 2-byte length and a 1,952-byte public key. Read on-chain
• Account signatures ML-DSA ML-DSA-65 Mainnet, mandatory OP_CHECKSIG calls pqcrystals_dilithium3_ref_verify with an empty context; the Makefile builds the reference code with DILITHIUM_MODE 3. Source code or release
• Identity layer ML-DSA ML-DSA-65 Mainnet, mandatory Miner identity key registration requires three of four seed-node attestations, each a Dilithium signature, from height 40,000. Source code or release

A role not listed is not evidenced either way. Every scheme, and which other chains share it, is in the cryptography registry.

Score breakdown

How it compares

Roadmap

1. 14 January 2026 shipped

   Release v1.4.0 starts a mainnet soft launch. source

2. 17 January 2026 shipped

   Release v2.0.0 resets the chain: its notes say all existing mainnet wallets are invalidated, and coins mined on the previous chain are not carried over. source

3. 28 January 2026 shipped

   Dilithion mainnet begins from a reset genesis, with Dilithium signatures for every spend and RandomX proof of work. source

4. 14 August 2026 shipped

   Node and wallet release v4.5.1 is published, the software a holder installs to create Dilithium keys and sign spends. source

5. No date published planned

   A security audit engagement with Hacken, described in the README as planned, with no findings published yet. source

If holders never migrate

Not applicable

Every Dilithion output has been locked to a Dilithium key since the mainnet began on 28 January 2026, so there are no classical-key coins to migrate.

As of 23 October 2026. Published beside the score, not in it. Every chain's stance is compared on the commitments page.

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.

Dilithion has no harvest-now-decrypt-later exposure in the sense this index usually means. Coins sit in pay-to-public-key-hash outputs, so an unspent output shows a hash and no key, and when a spend reveals the key, what an attacker records is an ML-DSA-65 lattice key that Shor's algorithm does not help with. The scheme is stateless, so there is no one-time key whose reuse leaks the private key. The residual point is the address, not the key: it is a 160-bit hash, which Grover's algorithm searches in about 2 to the 80 steps, a smaller margin than the signature's own.

Questions

Sources

1. Dilithion node source: src/script/interpreter.cpp Dilithion on GitHub · primary · checked 23 October 2026
2. Dilithion node source: src/script/script.h Dilithion on GitHub · primary · checked 23 October 2026
3. Dilithion vendored CRYSTALS reference code Dilithion on GitHub · primary · checked 23 October 2026
4. Dilithion node source: src/core/chainparams.cpp Dilithion on GitHub · primary · checked 23 October 2026
5. Dilithion node source: src/consensus/params.h Dilithion on GitHub · primary · checked 23 October 2026
6. Dilithion README Dilithion on GitHub · primary · checked 23 October 2026
7. Dilithion release v4.5.1 Dilithion on GitHub · primary · checked 23 October 2026
8. Dilithion explorer API: network statistics Dilithion · primary · checked 23 October 2026
9. Dilithion explorer API: spend in block 110,588 Dilithion · primary · checked 23 October 2026
10. Dilithion mainnet Dilithion · primary · checked 23 October 2026
11. FIPS 204: Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Standard (ML-DSA) NIST · primary · checked 23 October 2026
12. Dilithion release v2.0.0 Dilithion on GitHub · primary · checked 23 October 2026
13. Dilithion release v1.4.2 Dilithion on GitHub · primary · checked 23 October 2026
14. Dilithion release v1.4.0 Dilithion on GitHub · primary · checked 23 October 2026

@misc{hardyindex_dilithion_2026,
  author       = {{The Hardy Index}},
  title        = {Dilithion: quantum readiness assessment},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://hardyindex.com/chains/dilithion}},
  note         = {Hardy Score 93.5 of 100, Tier 1: Native. Methodology v1.8},
  urldate      = {2026-11-13}
}