On April 21, 2026, Coinbase’s Quantum Advisory Council released a position paper naming Aptos and Algorand as the two blockchain networks best positioned to handle the cryptographic challenges that quantum computers will eventually bring. Its advisory group includes Scott Aaronson from UT Austin and Dan Boneh from Stanford University, two of the most cited names in cryptography and quantum computing research.

What makes Aptos different here

Most networks today secure wallets using elliptic curve cryptography. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could, in theory, reverse-engineer private keys from public ones.

Aptos was built with this transition in mind from day one. Launched in 2022, it runs on the Move programming language and uses a modular cryptographic infrastructure. If Aptos needs to swap out its signature scheme, it can do that in a single transaction without asking users to create new accounts or move their assets anywhere.

The Coinbase council’s paper specifically highlighted this crypto-agility as Aptos’s central advantage. Crypto-agility means a system’s ability to swap cryptographic primitives without disrupting the broader network.

In December 2025, the network proposed integrating SLH-DSA, a post-quantum signature scheme that has been formally standardized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Algorand’s approach and why the council cited both

Algorand earned its spot in the paper through a different but complementary set of choices. The network has implemented Falcon signatures within its State Proofs, and it offers native key rotation as a built-in feature. Falcon is a lattice-based cryptographic scheme, which is one of the algorithm families that NIST has identified as resistant to quantum attacks.

Researchers from the Ethereum Foundation were also listed among the advisory council’s contributors.

What this means for the market

The council’s paper is explicit that immediate threats are not imminent. The point is about preparation time horizons, specifically that the window between “quantum computers become theoretically capable” and “quantum computers become practically deployable” may be shorter than the time required to retrofit major blockchain networks.

Being named in a paper co-authored by cryptographers from Stanford and UT Austin, distributed under Coinbase’s advisory brand, is a different category of validation than a marketing announcement or a partnership press release.