A post-quantum layer-1
monetary base.
Qanum keeps its base layer deliberately austere — a UTXO ledger secured by proof-of-work, native spending templates, and post-quantum signatures from genesis — so custody, settlement and long-term security stay simple enough to audit.
Money built for the post-quantum horizon
Quantum computers able to break classical signatures are not part of everyday infrastructure yet, but migrating a live monetary network takes years of standards, software, audits and social coordination. Qanum starts from post-quantum cryptography instead of adding it later.
Post-quantum signatures
NIST level 5 from the testnet genesis: ML-DSA-87 (FIPS 204) as the signing suite and SLH-DSA-SHAKE-256s (FIPS 205) for cold recovery, verified with liboqs. Verification is mandatory: the node runs a known-answer self-test at startup and refuses to start if it fails.
Post-quantum P2P network
Every peer connection runs a hybrid Noise handshake (X25519 + ML-KEM-1024, ChaCha20-Poly1305) authenticated by an ML-DSA-87 node identity, pinned on first use. There is no TLS and no plain-text P2P on any network.
UTXO, not a VM
A discrete, auditable ledger of unspent outputs with seven native spending templates — single key, recovery path, multisig, HTLC, vaults and burn — instead of a general-purpose smart-contract engine.
Native self-custody
Vaults, delayed recovery paths and threshold multisig (P2MULTI, up to 16 keys) are consensus-level templates, not wallet conventions, so hot/cold separation and recovery are part of the protocol.
Verifiable state
Every block header commits to the UTXO set (utxo_root).
A new node can bootstrap from a peer's snapshot and verify it
against the proof-of-work header chain, falling back to a full
download if any check fails.
Proof of work
SHA3-256 over a 152-byte header, anchored ASERT difficulty adjustment and a 75-second target. Proof-of-work mining is not quantum-resistant with any hash function; the whitepaper (§9.9) states the limits.
Run a Qanum node
Build from source with real post-quantum signature verification.
# Build (liboqs is compiled from source; the only kind of build)
cargo build --release --features crypto-oqs
# Run a testnet node that mines
./target/release/qanumd \
-chain=testnet \
--datadir="$HOME/.qanum/testnet" \
--rpcuser=user --rpcpassword=pass \
--strict-full --verifier oqs \
-gen=1 --mining-interval-ms=500
# Talk to it with the CLI
./target/release/qanum-cli --network=testnet --addr=127.0.0.1:18338 \
--rpcuser=user --rpcpassword=pass getblockcountAn austere base, on purpose
What Qanum sets out to do, and what it deliberately does not try to be.
Goals
Post-quantum resistance from genesis, cryptographic agility for future migrations, strong self-custody, a small auditable design, modular scaling, and minimal political governance over the base protocol.
Non-goals
No EVM or general-purpose VM on layer 1, no promise of thousands of transactions per second at the base layer, no ring signatures or confidential amounts in consensus, and no token-vote governance over money. Frequent payments, richer execution and strong privacy belong to higher layers.
Testnet live, mainnet after an external audit
v0.9.0, released on 17 October 2026, is the first public release. No mainnet genesis exists: mainnet launches only after an external security audit. Pre-release reviews so far are internal; none of them is an independent audit.
| Network | P2P (Noise, post-quantum) | RPC (loopback) | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| mainnet | 8445 | 8338 | no genesis yet |
| testnet | 18445 | 18338 | live |
| regtest | 28445 | 28338 | development |
Testnet coins have no economic value.
MIT OR Apache-2.0, built to be audited
Qanum is a Rust implementation released under the MIT or Apache-2.0 license. The repository opens to the public shortly; until then, access is granted on request. Consensus changes go through public proposals and conservative activation.