Sui adds optional post-quantum signatures, ML-DSA-65 for accounts and SLH-DSA-SHA2-128s for vaults, no seed migration.
4 comments
No seed migration means old wallet backups stay forever on the legacy curve.
> No seed migration means old wallet backups stay forever on the legacy curve.
No, it means the recovery phrase does not need to change, not that the account itself is forever stuck. The key point here is upgradeability at the signing layer, old backups can still restore into a wallet that knows how to derive or wrap a PQ key later.
Sui is basically following the old BIP-32/BIP-39 wallet model here, where the seed stays put and the signing key is what changes (or gets supplemented), so the hard part is really policy around when a vault flips to SLH-DSA and how you avoid users stranding themselves mid-upgrade....
Optional PQ on the account path sounds nicer than a blanket migration, but it also means the weakest link is still the recovery story, not the signature algorithm.
Optional PQ signatures always make me wonder about fee pressure. If the ML-DSA path is much larger, do wallets end up nudging everyone back to the old scheme?