XRP Ledger Foundation Plan Requires Owners to Disable Old Keys by 2028

The XRP Ledger Foundation has published a design that places the work of quantum-proofing accounts on the people who hold them. Under the plan, each account owner would add a post-quantum signing key to their account and then switch the original key off, cutting the route an attacker could otherwise use to reconstruct the original key.

The framework, published on November 10, 2026, requires owners to disable their old keys by 2028. It leaves no automatic migration step: responsibility for the transition rests with individual key holders.

Why Quantum Resistance Matters

Most blockchain accounts, including those on the XRP Ledger, are secured with elliptic-curve digital signatures. This class of cryptography is widely regarded as vulnerable to sufficiently powerful quantum computers running Shor's algorithm, which could in principle derive a private key from its public counterpart. Security researchers have also warned of "harvest now, decrypt later" scenarios, in which on-chain public data collected today could be exploited once quantum hardware matures. The exposure is not unique to crypto: elliptic-curve signatures also protect much of the wider internet, which is why standards bodies rather than individual projects have been setting the broader transition timelines.

The XRP Ledger, a decentralized public blockchain launched in 2012, already includes account-level tools for key management, such as assigning regular signing keys and disabling a master key. The Foundation's design extends this approach by introducing a post-quantum signing key as the account's active credential and retiring the original classical key. Ledger-wide features of that kind — new signing schemes among them — reach the live network through the XRP Ledger's amendment process, in which validators vote on protocol changes before they activate.

Post-quantum cryptography moved a step closer to mainstream adoption when the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finalized its first post-quantum cryptography standards in 2024. NIST's separate transition guidance, issued the same year, recommends deprecating quantum-vulnerable public-key cryptography by 2030 and disallowing it by 2035. Against that backdrop, the Foundation's proposal ties the ledger's key hygiene to a concrete timeline, making the 2028 deadline an individual obligation for every account owner rather than a network-wide, automatic change. For now the framework exists as a published design; which specific post-quantum algorithms owners would be expected to adopt, and how wallet tooling will support the switch, are among the details still to surface.

This content was first published on COINOTAG: https://en.coinotag.com/xrp-ledger-quantum-key-plan-owners-disable-old-keys