Today we are releasing Quantum Cadence, a post-quantum version of Cadence, our consensus protocol with multiple concurrent proposers. Quantum Cadence uses no quorum certificates, and its safety and liveness do not depend on signatures. Most modern consensus protocols, Cadence included, rely heavily on signatures and quorum certificates, which a large-scale quantum computer could forge. Simply replacing today's signatures with post-quantum ones would make certificates too large for every validator to send around in a high-performance blockchain. Quantum Cadence instead draws on Forget-IT, a recent signature-free consensus protocol co-developed by researchers at Category Labs. Quantum Cadence still keeps the overall architecture and core guarantees of Cadence, so our Cadence prototype was easy to carry over: an AI was able to adapt it to Quantum Cadence in a few hours, and an early prototype now runs on an internal test network. We designed Quantum Cadence to be practical for a high-performance blockchain. In our simulations, its latency is similar to Cadence's, and it scales better with the number of proposers. Interactive explainer: category.xyz/quantum-cadence. Full paper: arxiv.org/abs/2610.32803. Joint work by @MohammadMJalal1, @TobiasKlenze, and @komasito55

I am a technology optimist. I believe: 1. decentralization and censorship-resistance (real versions of these properties, not larps) matter to human freedom in the coming age of AI 2. self-sovereign money, implemented by code and maintained through decentralized consensus, is the final form of money. But it needs to be truly decentralized -- cut out every possible weakness, trust assumption, keeper, etc. Of course there will be connectors to the real world - harden those maximally 3. AI will write most smart contract code. Spec-driven development with Formal Verification will be how new contracts are written rigorously. FV will also be crucial to securing all the infra including the blockchain itself 4. AI will harden our surfaces, with some unfortunate hacks in the process, but ultimately the crypto and financial industries will come out stronger 5. properly-constructed and properly-indexed data lakes will enable agents to build software far more productively 6. governments will move to restrict AI usage in the future, causing true decentralization and CR to matter in dramatic fashion 7. quantum security will be a must for any ledger where people trust their assets. And specifically, blockchains will need to deliver quantum-resistance while retaining programmability and performance. Again, no larping 8. ZK will be an important part of the puzzle too, as it'll be increasingly important to prove off-chain computation and utilize the result on chain. But again, performance and effortlessness for users will be the differentiator 9. pragmatic and composable privacy will be the missing piece for real adoption. People will use apps that stack together stablecoins, DeFi, blockchain settlement, passkey or MPC authentication, and friction-free onramps, but the part that gets fintechs over the line is knowing that user balances will remain private while still being able to tap into shared liquidity 10. blockchain will serve as the global, universal marketplace, for anyone anywhere to get the best opportunities. For that we will need guarantees of fair execution, protection from frontrunning, and a convergence of all of the best assets At @category_xyz and the @monad Foundation, we are assembling all of these missing pieces in parallel with extreme urgency, and I hope this is clear from our actions. See you in the future

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