A Presale That Defied the Bear Market
While most crypto projects struggle to gain traction in today’s market, qLABS managed something unusual: they raised $950,000 in under 24 hours by selling just 2% of their total qONE token supply. That kind of enthusiasm stands out, especially when you consider the modest allocation cap was intentionally designed to discourage quick flippers and preserve funds for actual development work.
Token holders should be able to claim and trade their qONE on the Hyperliquid exchange starting today around 14:00 UTC—the team recommends using Rabby Wallet for the smoothest experience. What makes this listing particularly interesting is that qONE becomes the first quantum-resistant token available on Hyperliquid, tapping into real anxiety about whether today’s encryption will hold up against tomorrow’s quantum computers.
The timing feels significant. We’re living through a venture funding drought, yet a token focused on a specific, technical problem managed to break through. qLABS partnered with 01 Quantum, a Canadian cybersecurity firm, to build their story around a question that’s moved from academic papers to corporate risk assessments: what happens when quantum computers become powerful enough to crack the cryptography protecting trillions of dollars in digital assets?
The Quantum Threat Is No Longer Theoretical
Ask different experts when quantum computers will pose a real threat, and you’ll get different answers. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang thinks we’re looking at 15 to 30 years before “useful” quantum hardware emerges. Other researchers put the timeline closer to a decade. But here’s the thing—no matter who’s right, the infrastructure securing nearly all of crypto (RSA, ECDSA, SHA-based signatures) would be vulnerable once that threshold is crossed.
The warning signs are already flashing. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology has officially endorsed several post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms. The Ethereum Foundation now has a dedicated research unit working on quantum resilience. Regulators, exchanges, and custody providers are all quietly running the same uncomfortable calculations about what “Q-Day” could mean for their systems—even as budgets tighten and priorities shift.
qLABS is betting there’s a gap between the urgency of the problem and the slow pace of protocol-level solutions. Rather than waiting years for hard forks or layer-one migrations, qONE offers NIST-aligned post-quantum signatures through what they call a middleware layer—essentially a zero-knowledge proof engine combined with IronCAP technology from 01 Quantum. The key selling point? It works with existing ERC-20 tokens without requiring massive consensus changes, and they plan to expand to Solana and Bitcoin holdings down the line.
How qONE Compares to Other Approaches
If you look at the broader landscape, efforts to quantum-proof crypto generally fall into three buckets. Research groups like Project Eleven are mapping vulnerable keys and drafting multi-year migration plans—especially for Bitcoin’s enormous UTXO set. Layer-one blockchain teams are experimenting with new signature schemes, but those upgrades are politically messy, technically complex, and rarely backwards-compatible. Meanwhile, some custodians are testing stronger key management practices, though few have reached full PQC compliance.
qONE takes a different route by plugging into the wallet and smart-contract layer through their Quantum-Sig protocol. There’s a trade-off: the keys are more than 20 times larger than what we use today. But the team claims they’ve offset that bulk through aggregation and off-chain proof compression, which should actually reduce gas costs in practice.
The Economics Behind the Token
Early adopters get rewarded through protocol fee rebates and a staking program that burns a portion of collected revenue. It’s designed so token value ties to the volume of assets being protected rather than pure speculation. The company has set an ambitious goal: securing 2% of all ERC-20 assets, which would represent roughly $20 billion. If institutional treasuries decide that wallet-based protection is faster than waiting for chain-level overhauls, that number becomes more plausible.
Of course, being first doesn’t guarantee staying ahead. Coinbase is funding its own initiatives. The Ethereum Foundation has its task force. Even traditional banking consortia are exploring PQC stacks. But for now, qONE has captured attention and momentum—two things that matter in crypto. In a market often dominated by meme coins and narrative plays, an infrastructure token built around a genuine security concern feels like a different kind of bet. And judging by the presale, plenty of people are willing to make it.
