Post-quantum authorization · Arc mainnet
USDC that answers to a hash-based key, and nothing else
Olinea holds USDC on Arc and releases it only for an SLH-DSA signature that Arc's own precompile verifies on-chain. No owner, no admin, no pause, no upgrade.
Hash-based, not elliptic-curve
32 bytes of public key. Breaking ECDSA does not forge a release.
Checked on-chain
Arc's precompile verifies inside the transaction. No oracle, no signer to trust.
No owner, no admin
Nothing can pause, upgrade or redirect it. Depositing grants no rights.
How it works
- Deposit. A vault is deployed with a 32-byte hash-based key and holds USDC. Anyone can deposit; nobody gains control.
- Sign. Your key signs one 32-byte digest binding chain, vault, recipient, amount and nonce. No Arc account needed.
- Relay. Anyone pays the gas. The vault decodes the boolean the precompile returns, and only then moves the USDC.
Verified against Arc mainnet
Real calls to the precompile at 0x1800…0004 with a real keypair. A forged signature
is a value, not an exception.
| Test | On-chain result |
|---|---|
| Real signature + matching message | true |
| 1-bit tampered signature | false |
| Wrong public key, valid signature | false |
| Valid signature, different message | false |
444,122–448,502 gas per release, which cost 0.00888–0.00897 USDC at Arc's base fee of about 20 Gwei. The digest, the ABI and the failure modes are in the docs.
Limitations
- Unaudited. New code. A test suite is evidence, not a review. Don't deposit what you can't lose.
- No recovery. Lose the key and the funds are gone by design — there is no escape hatch.
- Circle's denylist still applies. USDC can block transfers. This is not denylist resistance.
- Verification costs 444,122–448,502 gas across two measured releases, 0.00888–0.00897 USDC each.
- Signatures are 7,856 bytes. Signing takes seconds, not milliseconds.
FAQ
Is Olinea audited?
No. A Foundry suite and a conformance run against the live precompile exist instead of a review — treat the vault accordingly.
What happens if I lose the signing key?
The funds are unrecoverable. No owner, no recovery address, no pause, no upgrade path — the key fixed at deployment is the only way out.
Does this protect me from quantum computers today?
Not today: nothing yet breaks ECDSA. The problem is that long-lived keys and recorded transactions are already being collected to be broken later.
What does a release cost?
444,122–448,502 gas across two measured releases, which came to 0.00888–0.00897 USDC at Arc's base fee of about 20 Gwei. Still fractions of a cent.
Can I use this in my own contract?
Yes. MIT-licensed, and the pieces separate cleanly. The one rule to carry across: decode the boolean the precompile returns. The docs cover the digest, the ABI and the failure modes.