Ethereum’s post-quantum signature verification cost drops 6.6x

Fireblocks published an optimized EVM implementation of an ML-DSA-44 signature verifier, a post-quantum cryptographic scheme compliant with NIST’s FIPS 204 standard. The headline number: verification now costs 1.23 million gas, down from the previous state-of-the-art benchmark of 8.09 million gas set by ZKNox’s ETHDILITHIUM project. That is a 6.6x reduction, achieved without any changes to the Ethereum protocol itself. What actually changed under the hood ML-DSA-44, formerly known as CRYSTALS-Dilithium, is a lattice-based signature scheme selected by NIST as a post-quantum standard. Fireblocks targeted the specific bottlenecks. The largest single gain came from optimizing SHAKE-256 hashing, a core component of the ML-DSA scheme, cutting its gas contribution from roughly 3 million down to approximately 400,000. Additional improvements came from more efficient number theoretic transform (NTT) computations and smarter memory expansion techniques within the EVM. For comparison, EIP-7885, a pending Ethereum improvement proposal that would add a dedicated NTT precompile to the protocol, was projected to bring ETHDILITHIUM’s cost down to around 5.73 million gas. Fireblocks reached 1.23 mi...