Changelog
Changelog
Every score change, methodology revision and correction, newest first. A benchmark that cannot show what it changed and why is an opinion with a number attached.
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Methodology v1.1: the bottom of the spine becomes Exposed
The fifth rung of the readiness spine was Unverified, which described a chain marketing itself as quantum-safe without a confirmed deployment. That left no rung for a chain with quantum-vulnerable signatures and no published position at all, so five such chains sat in Debating carrying a label more generous than their evidence. The fifth rung is now Exposed: quantum-vulnerable signatures on mainnet today, and no public post-quantum plan, proposal or research programme. Unverified becomes a flag rather than a rung, applied to a chain whose marketing claim cannot be confirmed but whose evidence still supports a published row. The deployment-score mapping is unchanged, so this re-labels the floor rather than re-weighting the rubric.
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Five chains re-tiered from Debating to Exposed
Avalanche, Dogecoin, Hyperliquid, Litecoin and TON were placed in Tier 4: Debating only because the spine had nowhere lower, and each carried a caveat saying so. Under the v1.1 spine they move to Tier 5: Exposed, which is what the evidence supports: quantum-vulnerable signatures securing funds on mainnet today, and no post-quantum plan, proposal or research programme that we could find. Their deployment dimension falls from 2 to 1, which lowers each Hardy Score by 2.5 points. No other dimension changed and no other chain moved. Bitcoin, BNB Chain, IOTA and Tron remain in Debating, because each has acknowledged the threat and has proposals, research or a stated intention on the public record.
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QANplatform held back pending a public mainnet
QANplatform was rated at the foot of the index while the bottom rung was Unverified. The v1.1 rung is Exposed, which describes the signatures securing funds on a live mainnet, and QANplatform has no public mainnet: there is no deployed scheme to inspect and no balances to assess. Placing it on that rung would assert something we cannot check, and placing it higher would credit marketing, so the row is held back under the same rule that withholds Cellframe and Quranium. Nothing here disputes QANplatform’s algorithm choice, which is NIST-standardised, or its component audits, which are real. The row returns when a mainnet is live and its signature scheme can be confirmed against a primary source.
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Coverage expanded to 24 layer-1 chains
Fourteen chains were added after verification against primary sources: Hedera, Sui, Polkadot, Zcash, Stellar and Aptos join Tier 3 on the strength of published roadmaps, while BNB Chain, Tron, Avalanche, Dogecoin, Litecoin, TON and Hyperliquid enter Tier 4. Abelian enters Tier 1, having run lattice-based post-quantum signatures on mainnet since 2022. Every added row carries a note and a primary source on all six dimensions.
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Cellframe and Quranium held back pending verification
Both projects market native post-quantum protection and both may well deserve a high placement, but neither could be confirmed. Cellframe documentation lists post-quantum algorithms as available without confirming which scheme secures ordinary transactions by default. Quranium developer documentation was not reachable at the time of writing, leaving its claim resting on announcements rather than an inspectable specification. Publishing an unverified high score would damage this index as much as publishing an unfair low one, so both rows are withheld until the deployed scheme can be checked.
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Scope boundary published, and Quant and Starknet ruled out
The index rates layer-1 blockchains only, meaning networks whose own signature scheme secures the balances people hold. Layer 2s, oracles, middleware, stablecoins and tokens are excluded, each for a stated reason, on the About page. Two named exclusions follow: Quant, because Overledger is interoperability middleware and QNT is an ERC-20 token that carries Ethereum exposure rather than its own, and Starknet, because it is an Ethereum layer 2 whose settlement security is partly inherited. Starknet is excluded despite substantive post-quantum work, since its hash-based STARK proofs are not vulnerable to Shor while its Stark-curve account keys are, and that distinction is not comparable on a layer-1 scale.
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IOTA reclassified from Native to Debating
IOTA is widely described as quantum-resistant on the strength of its original Winternitz one-time signature scheme. That scheme was removed in the Chrysalis upgrade in 2021 and replaced with Ed25519, which is quantum-vulnerable. IOTA’s current post-quantum support (ML-DSA, SLH-DSA and Falcon) sits in IOTA Identity and covers verifiable credentials, not layer-1 transaction signatures. We found no dated plan to restore post-quantum signatures at layer 1, so IOTA enters the index at Tier 4: Debating, not Tier 1: Native.
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Nervos CKB classified as Shipping rather than Committed
Nervos CKB’s SPHINCS+ lock script was audited by ScaleBit and began mainnet deployment in 2025, and a wallet using it has shipped. That is a post-quantum signature protecting real funds on mainnet, which places Nervos in Tier 2: Shipping rather than Tier 3: Committed.
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Index launched with ten chains
The Hardy Index published its first ranked dataset: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP Ledger, Cardano, Algorand, Nervos CKB, IOTA, QRL and QANplatform. Every dimension score carries a note and a primary source.
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Hardy Score methodology v1.0 published
The six weighted dimensions, their 0 to 10 anchors and the five-tier readiness spine were published in full. The deployment dimension is derived from the tier rather than scored separately, so a tier and a score can never contradict each other.
Spotted something wrong? Send the primary source that contradicts it to index@hardyindex.com. Corrections are logged here, including ours.
This is a security-readiness assessment, not investment advice.