QRL 2.0 Could Shape Crypto's Future. Why Are So Few Trying?

For seven weeks I watched the same number. From September 18 to October 30, QRL's weekly update put audits at 60%. Every Friday I opened it hoping the number had moved. Every Friday it hadn't, and my doubts grew.

Then on November 6 it moved to 65%. On November 13 it reached 70%.

It reminded me of something a developer from a rival project once told me. Nobody else will attempt a full quantum-safe smart contract platform for a long time, they said, because it's too hard. I wasn't sure I believed it. So I looked at what it actually takes.

Protecting a wallet is the easy part: you swap one signature for another. A smart contract platform is a different animal. Thousands of validators sign votes around the clock, with signatures many times bigger than Ethereum's. You need a new compiler, new wallets and hardware wallet support. And every layer has to be audited, because one bug at the bottom breaks everything above it. Ethereum, with all its money and talent, is aiming for about 2029. QRL's small team is already working toward its third testnet.

So why take on something that hard? Look at what happened last time. Ethereum launched in 2015 and gave people something to build. By 2017, token sales had raised over $5 billion. The apps brought the crowd. Now imagine the morning a quantum computer breaks its first real key. Apps everywhere will need a safe place to run, and QRL 2.0 wants to be that place.

And it might not stop with 2.0. QRL 2.0 is a hard fork: a new chain with new rules, and the move to it is happening either way. But a hard fork doesn't have to switch off the old chain. The old chain keeps running for as long as people run its software. So once 2.0 is up and running, QRL 1.0 could keep going alongside it. Ethereum didn't replace Bitcoin, and the two kept growing side by side. It's only an idea, but if 1.0 does keep going, a busy QRL 2.0 could bring new attention to it the same way.

So how far along is QRL 2.0? The team is building from the bottom up, and you can follow the audits layer by layer.

First, the cryptography: the code that creates keys and signs and checks every transaction. Trail of Bits audited go-qrllib, the Go library the node runs on. Halborn audited qrypto.js, the JavaScript library that wallets and apps use. Every finding was resolved, and both reports are public.

Next, the tools. The Ledger app finished its audit and fixes in September, and the tool that verifies official releases finished its audit too.

Then Hyperion, the language developers will write smart contracts in. Ciphsure audited it, and the fixes shipped this week in Hyperion 0.3.1. That's part of why the number finally moved.

That leaves the two programs that run the chain itself. go-qrl runs transactions and contracts. qrysm runs proof of stake, where validators agree on which blocks are real. Their audits are what's left, and the weekly update puts that internal audit work at 85%. Both are built on Ethereum's software, code that has been battle-tested on Ethereum for years, including some tough moments that Ethereum's developers fixed. The hard part is what QRL changed: it swapped in quantum-safe signatures, and that part is brand new.

QRL 2.0 is clearly making progress, and the team has come a long way. I can't say when it will be finished, or whether there will be more delays. What I can say is that the number is moving again, and that's good to see. I wish the team the best on the way to the finish line.