NEAR Integrates Post‑Quantum Signing; Token Rises 5.6%

NEAR Protocol announced it is integrating post‑quantum transaction signing and other cryptographic upgrades across its Layer‑1 blockchain. The protocol wrote that the changes are intended to protect the network and its Intents cross‑chain system from future quantum computing threats. The NEAR token climbed 5.6% to $1.47 on the day of the announcement.

Developers outlined plans to add quantum‑resistant cryptographic primitives and to update consensus, validator operations, epoch synchronization and transaction signing. In a blog titled “Preparing NEAR for the Quantum Computing Era,” developers wrote that NEAR’s original design is already more resistant to quantum attacks than many chains and that the new layers will strengthen that base.

The team described the effort as “a single future‑proof migration” and plans a coordinated transition across protocol components rather than a decentralized, piecemeal approach. Work is in progress and no firm completion date has been provided. Specific implementation milestones will appear on the project’s blog and GitHub for builders and validators to follow.

Market data showed the token gained across daily, weekly and monthly charts. NEAR’s market capitalization was about $1.93 billion, with a circulating supply near 1.29 billion tokens and roughly $438.5 million in 24‑hour trading volume.

Developers noted that advances in quantum computing could eventually break widely used elliptic‑curve signatures. They added that achieving full quantum resistance will require changes beyond transaction signing, including updates to consensus rules, validator infrastructure and epoch synchronization.

NEAR has also positioned projects that combine blockchain and artificial intelligence. The protocol describes itself as “the blockchain for AI.” Co‑founder Illia Polosukhin is a co‑author of the 2017 paper that introduced the transformer architecture used in many large language models. The NEAR Foundation launched an AI Agent Fund to support projects building agent tokens for identity and payments on the network.

Node operators and developers building on NEAR’s Intents system were advised to monitor the project’s public repositories for code updates and migration guides as the work progresses.