First Public Working Draft: Quantum-Resistant Cryptosuites v1.0

The Verifiable Credentials Working Group has published a First Public Working Draft today for the Quantum-Resistant Cryptosuites v1.0 specification. This document defines several Data Integrity Cryptosuites for use when generating a digital signature of, for example, Verifiable Credentials using Quantum-resistant digital signature algorithms.

Publication of this draft is especially timely, in view of some recent research results on quantum vulnerabilities. That study led experts to consider that there exists a small but meaningful probability that elliptic curve keys could be broken by the early 2030s. As a result, organizations have already started to convert their authentication services to eventually use quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms, with deadlines as early as 2029. This new specification will provide such digital signature schemes for verifiable credentials, and other data payloads, using the best stable quantum-resistant algorithms known today.

The Working Group welcomes comments via the GitHub repository issues.