Tackling the Weight of Post-Quantum Signatures

Blockchains currently rely on classical cryptography, but future advancements in quantum computing pose a significant risk to these systems. This threat has pushed the industry toward National Institute of Standards and Technology-standardized post-quantum alternatives such as ML-DSA and FN-DSA.

However, post-quantum signatures typically run 10 to 100 times larger than classical alternatives. On October 16, 2026, LayerZero Labs unveiled Aerie, a system built to address this weight problem by compressing signatures into compact proofs.

The research was developed in collaboration with a16z crypto research, Carnegie Mellon University, and Imperial College London. Aerie combines large batches of Falcon signatures into a single compact proof using a lattice-based polynomial commitment scheme called Akita.

Benchmark Performance and Efficiency

Aerie achieved notable headline benchmarks during testing on an Apple M4 Max MacBook Pro using only CPU cores without GPU acceleration. The system aggregated 32,768 Falcon-512 signatures in 0.65 seconds and 16,384 Falcon-1024 signatures in 0.63 seconds.

Throughput reached roughly 46,000 Falcon-512 signatures per second, while peak memory use during processing came in at 2.1 GiB. The resulting aggregated proofs work out to approximately 42 bytes per signature, which is 16 times smaller than predecessors.

Verification times also improved significantly. Checking an Aerie proof is reported to be 10 times faster than verifying each signature individually on a single core.

Comparison and Migration Path

The research compares Aerie directly against Orthus, an earlier signature aggregation system, on comparable hardware. Aerie delivers 1.5 times faster proving, 38 times faster verification, and proofs that are 1.7 times smaller.

LayerZero frames Aerie as a potential migration path to post-quantum security that does not require specialized hardware. Running on a consumer laptop's CPU at sub-second speeds suggests that low-latency post-quantum consensus may be achievable without raising the bar for participation.