How the PQ Account works

A smart account on LitVM that holds your funds and only lets them leave when your wallet and a post-quantum guardian key both approve the exact same action.

Your wallet proves the transaction comes from you. The guardian key adds a signature that stays secure even against quantum computers. A thief needs both, and today most thefts only get one of them.

They cannot move anything out of the PQ Account without a guardian file and its password. Move the account to a new wallet in the Security tab, or, if you cannot use the wallet any more, recover it to a new wallet with both guardian files.

Open your account on /pqaccount and press "Check the protection". It tries a withdrawal with your wallet only, as a free simulation, and shows the account contract refusing it. Every real send and withdrawal carries a 17,088-byte guardian signature that the contract checks.

So the second key never sits unlocked in your browser. Each send, withdrawal or key change asks for your guardian file and its password; the key signs that one action and is wiped from memory right away. Your wallet alone cannot send or withdraw, and nothing is ever approved for you in the background.

A copied file is useless without it, whether it was taken by malware, a synced folder or someone with access to your computer. The seed inside is encrypted with AES-256-GCM under a key derived from your password (PBKDF2-SHA256, 600,000 rounds). Nobody can reset the password, so keep it written down somewhere safe and separate from the files.

Use the other one. The backup key can replace a lost primary key in the Security tab. If both files are lost, nobody can recover the account, not even LitVMSwap.

Open the PQ Account page from a new wallet and choose "Recover your account". With both guardian files and their password, the account moves to the new wallet after a 7-day wait. Accounts created before recovery existed (version 1) can only be moved by their owner wallet.

No. Guardian keys are made in your browser and never sent anywhere. The contracts have no admin: nobody, including LitVMSwap, can freeze, upgrade or move your account.

A post-quantum signature is 17,088 bytes and checking it on chain takes about 2.8 million gas, so a send uses about 3 million gas. The zkLTC cost follows the LitVM gas price: about 0.00003 zkLTC at 0.01 gwei, and more when the network is busy.

Not quietly. With both files and the password they could start a recovery, but it waits 7 days, the account shows it, and you can cancel it with your wallet and one guardian file. Then replace your guardian keys. With only one file they cannot start a recovery at all.

zkLTC and any LitVM token. NFTs can be received too.

It protects what it controls: nothing leaves the account without a post-quantum signature, and both guardian keys can move the account away from a wallet that was stolen or broken. The chain underneath, your normal wallet and the admin keys of some token contracts still use classical cryptography today, as explained above.

Not yet. The PQ Account is a research release. It passes the official NIST test vectors and thousands of tampered-signature tests, but please keep only amounts you can afford to lose.

SLH-DSA relies only on hash functions, some of the best understood building blocks in cryptography, and it needs nothing from the chain except SHA-256, which LitVM already has. Lattice schemes such as ML-DSA have smaller signatures, and we are studying them for future versions.

It signs in a fraction of a second in the browser. The compact "128s" version takes several seconds per signature, longer on phones, which made every send feel slow.

This is the first step of our research. We plan to work on lower gas costs, swaps from the account, recovery options and support for the post-quantum upgrades of LitVM and Ethereum as they arrive.