[ANN] Midstate - Simple and Effective Post-Quantum Cryptocurrency (Rust)The quantum threat is real, and elliptic curves are on their last legs. They will work fine until one day, we will look back and say,
"Oh, that's when it didn't work anymore." Some post-quantum cryptocurrencies have already been developed, but almost all of them rely on Lattice-based cryptography. While currently believed to be quantum-resistant, the mathematical hardness of Lattices in a post-quantum world has not been definitively proven.
If we are going to build a lifeboat, we shouldn't build it out of experimental materials.
The most robust assumption in a post-quantum world is to rely on a single, battle-tested cryptographic primitive: the Hash Function.Midstate is a purely hash-based cryptocurrency built from the ground up in Rust.
⚠️ Disclaimer: Not a Speculative AssetLet me be absolutely clear upfront:
This project is not designed to make anyone money. There is no ICO. There is no premine. There is no dev tax, founder allocation, or VC funding. There is no marketing team.
Midstate is a cypherpunk engineering effort designed to solve a specific, looming cryptographic crisis. It is a lifeboat and a proof-of-concept for how a decentralized network can survive when Shor's algorithm renders traditional public-key cryptography obsolete. If you are looking for "number go up," look elsewhere. If you are interested in post-quantum network resilience, read on.
Live Network & ToolingYou don't have to compile a node to see it working. The network is live, and the browser tooling is entirely serverless (WebRTC).
How Midstate Works (The "Hash Everything" Approach)In Midstate, if you can hash, you can secure a network. There are no elliptic curves. Everything from block mining to transaction signing relies entirely on
BLAKE3, a highly parallelized and blazing-fast hash function.
- Winternitz One-Time Signatures (WOTS): Standard transactions are signed using WOTS. Private keys generate public keys via hashing, and signatures are revealed by exposing preimages. Because they are one-time-use, the wallet architecture automatically handles change and sibling UTXOs to ensure keys are never reused.
- Merkle Signature Scheme (MSS): For users who need a persistent, reusable address, Midstate wraps WOTS keys in a binary Merkle tree. A single 32-byte master public key (the Merkle root) can authorize thousands of signatures safely.
- Sequential Proof of Work: To neutralize parallel ASICs, Midstate uses a VDF-style sequential hash chain. Mining a block requires 1,000,000 strictly sequential BLAKE3 hashes. You cannot divide this math across multiple cores. This guarantees "One CPU, One Vote."
- Commit-Reveal Mempool: To prevent quantum-enabled MEV and front-running, transactions use a two-phase protocol. You first publish a Commit (a hash binding your inputs/outputs with a dynamic anti-spam PoW), and later broadcast the Reveal (the actual signatures).
Trustless WebRTC Browser WalletsThe Midstate web wallet is not a MetaMask clone talking to a centralized Infura server. It is a true Light Client running in your browser.
By utilizing
WebRTC Direct and
WASM SIMD128, the browser connects directly to the P2P swarm. It downloads Golomb-Rice compact block filters (Neutrino-style) to scan for funds without leaking addresses to the node. When you send a transaction or a chat message,
your browser natively mines the Proof-of-Work to submit it to the network.
DeFi on Bitcoin-Style UTXOs (Midscript)Midstate features a Turing-incomplete stack machine with zero gas fees. However, it introduces two powerful concepts:
Covenants (
OP_SUM_TO_ADDR) and
State Threads (
OP_READ_INPUT_STATE).
Using the live
Midscript IDE, you can write, compile, and emulate complex Smart Contracts directly in the browser. Midstate natively supports Constant Product AMMs (Uniswap style), Limit Orders, Atomic Swaps (HTLCs), and DAOs—all without the re-entrancy bugs or state-bloat of the EVM.
Provable Fair LaunchThere is no hidden pre-mine. The genesis block is mathematically anchored to a specific, historical Bitcoin block hash (000000000000000000018f5ad5625d43356136c2e50c6dc18967a90a18f0af2e). Furthermore, the entire genesis block reward (1.07 Billion units) was assigned to a human-readable text string instead of a public key, mathematically burning the entire genesis supply to prove no developer allocation exists.
Additional Features- Power-of-2 UTXOs & CoinJoin: All coins must be strict powers of 2. This identical denomination sizing allows the wallet to automatically coordinate trustless, P2P CoinJoin mixes, fracturing surveillance graphs.
- ASERT Difficulty: Uses the absolute-scheduled ASERT algorithm (16.16 fixed point math) to adjust difficulty on every single block, completely eliminating time-warp and hash-and-flee exploits.
- Q-Bolt L2: Instant, zero-fee Layer-2 payment channels routed over the Midstate P2P Ephemeral Chat bus.
- OOM Defense (Sparse Merkle Trees): Instead of an unbounded LevelDB database for state, UTXOs are aggregated into a 256-level SMT. A full node can sync, validate, and mine concurrently on a $15 Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W with 512MB of RAM.
We know the clock is ticking on ECDSA/secp256k1. Midstate is built for the day the clock strikes zero. Miners, cryptographers, and developers are welcome to join the network and help review the code.
