Quip Network Launches Post-Quantum QuipSwap on Base

Quip Network has introduced QuipSwap, a cross-chain swap protocol enabling direct peer-to-peer trading between wallets without relying on bridges, oracles, or wrapped assets. The web application is now live on Base, with trading on its order book scheduled to commence “shortly,” according to the company’s September 1 announcement. This product is a wallet and swap system built around a hash-based signature scheme, and much of the wider network it belongs to has yet to go live.

What’s Live and What’s Upcoming

The QuipSwap web app is currently operational on Base. Trading on the public order book will open soon, and a browser extension lists as “coming soon.” Support for additional chains, including Ethereum, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Polygon, Solana, and Bitcoin, is in plans. Quip states that Oak Security audited the protocol, and will publish the audit findings later, which means the full report is not yet available.

The swap mechanism functions as an atomic swap: a maker posts an offer, a taker commits, and both parties reveal a secret to release each other’s claim. No assets are in escrow until a swap is taken and funded. Quip describes this as non-custodial, with no liquidity pool backing the order book. The code is open source and available on GitHub.

The “post-quantum” designation stems from Quip accounts, which the company claims commit a WOTS+ hash-based public key alongside a chain’s existing signature. WOTS+ is the foundation of SLH-DSA, one of the hash-based schemes standardized by NIST. Though the cryptography belongs to a recognized family, Quip’s specific implementation hasn’t been independently validated as a module. The company’s materials acknowledge that no quantum computer capable of breaking elliptic-curve signatures currently exists, a point highlighted by the “harvest-now-decrypt-later” scenario.

Examining the Claims

The bridge-hack statistics cited by Quip are accurate and sourced from Chainalysis, which reported thirteen cross-chain bridge attacks in 2022 resulting in over $2 billion in losses. This is the problem the product aims to address. Whether QuipSwap effectively mitigates this risk in practice will depend on user adoption, the forthcoming audit, and the successful rollout of planned chain support.

Richard Carback, CTO and co-founder, stated: 

“You can’t run a distributed computation network where your own miners can break your cryptography. No chain supports quantum computation, so we had to build our own. No bridge or exchange supports quantum-resistant transactions either, so we had to fill the void.”

Two additional components of Quip Network: a quantum randomness subnet and the QVM for quantum smart contracts, are still under development. A quantum optimization subnet is currently on testnet. What has launched is a swap tool with a hash-based wallet, available on one chain.