Dear community,

I’m launching a new rubric today: The Web3 + AI Interview. Through a series of conversations with builders, innovators, and thought leaders working at the intersection of blockchain and artificial intelligence, I’ll explore the key ideas, emerging trends, and narratives shaping the future of technology.

I'm thrilled to welcome my first interviewee: Kapil Dhiman, co-founder and CEO of the Quantum Secure Layer-1 blockchain Quranium. Kapil and I discuss how quantum computing is about to impact blockchains, AI, and privacy tech, and what a financial infrastructure built for longevity should look like.

Thank you for being here! Let's dive in!

KD: Quranium emerged from a structural mismatch we couldn’t ignore.

Digital systems were becoming faster, more interconnected, and more valuable, yet the cryptography securing them was designed for a pre-quantum era. At the same time, quantum computing was no longer theoretical. Governments and research institutions were openly acknowledging the “harvest now, decrypt later” risk, where encrypted data collected today will be broken years from now.

What stood out was the industry response. Most solutions focused on incremental upgrades to legacy cryptography rather than questioning whether the foundation itself was still fit for purpose.

We started with a simple question: if you were building financial infrastructure meant to last 30–40 years, what would you trust it to run on?

That question led directly to Quranium, a Layer-1 designed around post-quantum cryptography at the protocol level, where security is treated as a non-negotiable constraint, not a feature to optimize later.

KD: Quantum risk does not begin on a hypothetical “Q-Day.” It begins the moment data is encrypted using schemes that are already on a formal deprecation path.

NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)) has finalized post-quantum cryptographic standards and has made it clear that today’s widely used public-key encryption is expected to be phased out around the 2030 timeframe. That means systems designed to protect data beyond that horizon are already exposed.

This is why Europol and national cybersecurity agencies are urging institutions to act now. Data encrypted today is expected to remain sensitive for many years, and waiting for full quantum capability before migrating creates an irreversible gap.

Waiting for certainty is not prudence, it is deferral of responsibility. Any system intended to store value, identity, or sensitive data over long periods must be built for the future threat model, not the one we are leaving behind.

KD: Most blockchains today rely on ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm), a digital signature scheme whose security depends on mathematical problems that quantum computers are expected to solve efficiently. When that happens, ECDSA doesn’t gradually weaken, it fundamentally fails.

SLH-DSA (State Less Hash-Based Digital Signature Algorithm) takes a different approach. Instead of relying on those mathematical assumptions, it uses cryptographic hash functions, which are among the most conservative and well-studied building blocks in cryptography. Even in a quantum world, hash-based schemes retain strong security guarantees.

That’s why SLH-DSA has been standardized by NIST as part of its post-quantum cryptography suite. Quranium adopts this class of signatures at the protocol level so that both account security and consensus remain viable in a post-quantum environment.

The real question is not if the industry will move here, but when and under what conditions.

KD: Q-Remix is a quantum-resistant, AI-assisted development environment built specifically for the Quranium ecosystem.

It allows developers to generate, test, and deploy smart contracts with minimal setup, while embedding AI directly into the workflow, from natural-language contract generation to real-time analysis and refinement.

The focus isn’t automation for its own sake, but reducing error and friction in environments where correctness and security are critical.

AI-enhanced functionality will extend across other parts of the ecosystem as well, particularly where complexity, verification, and long-term maintainability intersect, though details will be shared as those tools mature.

KD: AI systems depend on massive volumes of data, much of it sensitive. If that data is decrypted retrospectively, it can be combined with AI-driven automation to amplify harm: synthetic identity fraud, large-scale social engineering, and highly targeted misinformation.

The real risk lies in the interaction between AI and quantum capability. That’s why quantum-secure infrastructure matters not just for digital assets, but for any future AI system that touches money, identity, or decision-making at scale.

KD: It’s true that several privacy primitives, such as zero-knowledge proofs and fully homomorphic encryption, are believed to be mathematically resistant to quantum attacks. But confidentiality isn’t defined by individual primitives in isolation.

Most privacy systems still rely on classical cryptography for identity, authentication, and transaction authorization. If those layers become vulnerable, privacy guarantees can be indirectly undermined even if the core mathematics remains intact.

Quantum computing exposes fragility not by breaking privacy tools directly, but by stressing the assumptions around how systems are composed. NIST has been clear that protecting long-term confidentiality requires migrating the entire cryptographic stack.

In a quantum era, privacy can’t be treated as a feature, it has to be an end-to-end property of the system.

Thank you, Kapil Dhiman, for taking the time to talk to me and the Web3 + AI community! It was a pleasure learning more about Quranium, and the future you're envisioning.

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

Dear community,

I’m launching a new rubric today: The Web3 + AI Interview. Through a series of conversations with builders, innovators, and thought leaders working at the intersection of blockchain and artificial intelligence, I’ll explore the key ideas, emerging trends, and narratives shaping the future of technology.

I'm thrilled to welcome my first interviewee: Kapil Dhiman, co-founder and CEO of the Quantum Secure Layer-1 blockchain Quranium. Kapil and I discuss how quantum computing is about to impact blockchains, AI, and privacy tech, and what a financial infrastructure built for longevity should look like.

Thank you for being here! Let's dive in!

KD: Quranium emerged from a structural mismatch we couldn’t ignore.

Digital systems were becoming faster, more interconnected, and more valuable, yet the cryptography securing them was designed for a pre-quantum era. At the same time, quantum computing was no longer theoretical. Governments and research institutions were openly acknowledging the “harvest now, decrypt later” risk, where encrypted data collected today will be broken years from now.

What stood out was the industry response. Most solutions focused on incremental upgrades to legacy cryptography rather than questioning whether the foundation itself was still fit for purpose.

We started with a simple question: if you were building financial infrastructure meant to last 30–40 years, what would you trust it to run on?

That question led directly to Quranium, a Layer-1 designed around post-quantum cryptography at the protocol level, where security is treated as a non-negotiable constraint, not a feature to optimize later.

KD: Quantum risk does not begin on a hypothetical “Q-Day.” It begins the moment data is encrypted using schemes that are already on a formal deprecation path.

NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)) has finalized post-quantum cryptographic standards and has made it clear that today’s widely used public-key encryption is expected to be phased out around the 2030 timeframe. That means systems designed to protect data beyond that horizon are already exposed.

This is why Europol and national cybersecurity agencies are urging institutions to act now. Data encrypted today is expected to remain sensitive for many years, and waiting for full quantum capability before migrating creates an irreversible gap.

Waiting for certainty is not prudence, it is deferral of responsibility. Any system intended to store value, identity, or sensitive data over long periods must be built for the future threat model, not the one we are leaving behind.

KD: Most blockchains today rely on ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm), a digital signature scheme whose security depends on mathematical problems that quantum computers are expected to solve efficiently. When that happens, ECDSA doesn’t gradually weaken, it fundamentally fails.

SLH-DSA (State Less Hash-Based Digital Signature Algorithm) takes a different approach. Instead of relying on those mathematical assumptions, it uses cryptographic hash functions, which are among the most conservative and well-studied building blocks in cryptography. Even in a quantum world, hash-based schemes retain strong security guarantees.

That’s why SLH-DSA has been standardized by NIST as part of its post-quantum cryptography suite. Quranium adopts this class of signatures at the protocol level so that both account security and consensus remain viable in a post-quantum environment.

The real question is not if the industry will move here, but when and under what conditions.

KD: Q-Remix is a quantum-resistant, AI-assisted development environment built specifically for the Quranium ecosystem.

It allows developers to generate, test, and deploy smart contracts with minimal setup, while embedding AI directly into the workflow, from natural-language contract generation to real-time analysis and refinement.

The focus isn’t automation for its own sake, but reducing error and friction in environments where correctness and security are critical.

AI-enhanced functionality will extend across other parts of the ecosystem as well, particularly where complexity, verification, and long-term maintainability intersect, though details will be shared as those tools mature.

KD: AI systems depend on massive volumes of data, much of it sensitive. If that data is decrypted retrospectively, it can be combined with AI-driven automation to amplify harm: synthetic identity fraud, large-scale social engineering, and highly targeted misinformation.

The real risk lies in the interaction between AI and quantum capability. That’s why quantum-secure infrastructure matters not just for digital assets, but for any future AI system that touches money, identity, or decision-making at scale.

KD: It’s true that several privacy primitives, such as zero-knowledge proofs and fully homomorphic encryption, are believed to be mathematically resistant to quantum attacks. But confidentiality isn’t defined by individual primitives in isolation.

Most privacy systems still rely on classical cryptography for identity, authentication, and transaction authorization. If those layers become vulnerable, privacy guarantees can be indirectly undermined even if the core mathematics remains intact.

Quantum computing exposes fragility not by breaking privacy tools directly, but by stressing the assumptions around how systems are composed. NIST has been clear that protecting long-term confidentiality requires migrating the entire cryptographic stack.

In a quantum era, privacy can’t be treated as a feature, it has to be an end-to-end property of the system.

Thank you, Kapil Dhiman, for taking the time to talk to me and the Web3 + AI community! It was a pleasure learning more about Quranium, and the future you're envisioning.

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.