2026-07-15 · ledger
Ledger has published a technical update describing post-quantum cryptography support in its SDK, including ML-KEM and ML-DSA implementations aligned with the NIST standards process. The company frames the move as preparation for a future where current public-key assumptions can no longer be trusted. For cold-storage users, this is a custody story as much as a cryptography story. The whole point of offline signing and hardware-backed control is to preserve trust over long time horizons, and that trust depends on planning for tomorrow’s failure modes before they become today’s incident.
Ledger says it has implemented the NIST-standardized ML-KEM and ML-DSA algorithms inside its SDK despite the tight memory limits of hardware devices. The post explains that the quantum threat is not immediate, but the preparation work has to happen early because wallet, signing, and verification systems are built for long-term use.
If long-lived signing assumptions fail, the damage is not limited to a single transaction. Custody records, recovery workflows, and archived wallet-related artifacts can all become harder to trust, which raises the risk of permanent asset loss or an inability to prove that a backup, signature, or recovery path is authentic.
Cold storage keeps private keys and recovery materials in hardware-isolated environments while cryptographic standards evolve around them. That separation gives custodians time to migrate, re-verify, and re-archive critical material using new standards without exposing core assets to the risks of hot-wallet convenience or constantly connected infrastructure.
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