Cost of Verifying Post-Quantum Signatures on Ethereum Reduced to 1.23 Million Gas

The cost of verifying post-quantum signatures on Ethereum (ETH) has been measured at 1.23 million gas, which is 6.6 times lower than the previous public standard. Fireblocks has implemented the ML-DSA-44 signature verifier on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), where the previous standard was 8.09 million gas. This operation was conducted on the current EVM without any protocol changes, running 144 automated research agents for nine days, with an estimated cost of about $7,500 (approximately 10.18 million KRW). The verification process confirmed over 320 verification tests and 62 machine-verifiable arithmetic properties using Z3. The key to the cost reduction was in hash and memory savings, reducing the gas contribution related to SHAKE-256 from about 3 million gas to approximately 400,000 gas. The 1.23 million gas represents the cost for verifying a single signature, while the cost for public key registration must be calculated separately. Post-quantum signatures are a digital signature method designed to counter quantum computers, and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is set to finalize FIPS 204 on August 13, 2024. Ethereum's official security roadmap outlines preparations for post-quantum readiness, presenting account abstraction and post-quantum signature precompilation as transition paths.

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