Volume II — Post-Quantum Settlement

01

What breaks, what survives

Shor's algorithm ends elliptic-curve and RSA cryptography; Grover's halves symmetric key strength. The triage is precise.

Replace nowECDSA-256

Settlement signatures and TLS certificates. Shor's algorithm breaks the elliptic-curve discrete log — every signed instruction becomes retrospectively forgeable.

Replace nowECDH / RSA

Key exchange and encrypted channels. Shor's also factors large integers — all asymmetric key exchange is vulnerable.

UpgradeAES-128

Grover's quadratic speedup effectively turns AES-128 into AES-64 against a quantum adversary.

AcceptableAES-256

Reduced to ~128 bits of quantum security — still sound. AES-256 survives the transition unchanged.

DeployML-DSA

The FIPS 204 lattice-based signature standard — no known classical or quantum attack; a drop-in replacement for ECDSA in settlement workflows.

02

Fifteen chapters in three parts

I

The Quantum Threat — 5 chapters

Quantum computing for settlement practitioners; Shor's algorithm and the end of ECDSA; Grover's and symmetric crypto; the Mosca inequality and the 2030–2035 consensus; harvest-now-decrypt-later — why the clock already runs.

Threat model · Risk horizon · Active threat

II

The Post-Quantum Arsenal — 5 chapters

The NIST standards mapped (ML-KEM, ML-DSA, SLH-DSA, FN-DSA); lattice cryptography from intuition to implementation; hash-based signatures for archival records; what QKD can and cannot deliver; and QRNG, the overlooked foundation.

FIPS 203–205 · Mathematics · QKD · QRNG

III

Migration and Applications — 5 chapters

Why a settlement blockchain is structurally harder to migrate than any other system; hybrid schemes as the immediate bridge; the seven-layer quantum-safe DLT reference architecture; DORA, CNSA 2.0, EBA, ECB and SWIFT timelines; and production Python down to a post-quantum settlement ledger built from scratch.

Transition · Reference architecture · Python

The hard part isn't the mathematics — it's the migration. An immutable ledger with multilateral governance is structurally harder to upgrade than any system finance has ever re-keyed.

That's why Volume II is a migration manual as much as a cryptography book: hybrid schemes you can deploy unilaterally today, and a layer-by-layer architecture that says which algorithm goes where, and why.

Regulators have set the clock: CNSA 2.0 targets 2030–2035. The book's answer is a path you can start walking now.

See the post-quantum code →

Get Volume II

Published by Seven Lions Editions — read the abstract, or take the whole framework home.

View in the catalogue → Start with Volume I