Quantum-resilient accounts, smarter fees, and bigger smart contracts
Algorand v5.0.0 is now live on mainnet. It Is the largest protocol upgrade since staking rewards in January 2025. Quantum resilient accounts land natively for the first time. The network adopts a usage-based fee model as a first step toward a clearer path for long-term sustainability. And developers get a serious upgrade to what they can build, from bigger smart contracts to new cross-app capabilities.
Here's everything that's new:
Quantum-resilient accounts, now native
With v5.0.0, post-quantum accounts are now a native part of the Algorand protocol.
Almost all of today's crypto security relies on math that's currently unbreakable by any computer that is available today. Quantum computers, once powerful enough, could someday change that, and security researchers have long warned about "harvest now, decrypt later," the risk that encrypted data is being recorded today to crack later. That's why long term integrity matters now.
This isn't the Algorand protocol's first move on quantum security. In 2022, State Proofs signed using FALCON, a post-quantum signature scheme, were deployed to mainnet, , years before most blockchains started planning migrations. Those proofs already protect the chain's entire historical record by anchoring the chain's entire history back to genesis with quantum-resilient signatures.
In 2025, the first quantum-resilient transaction on the Algorand network was sent on mainnet. Then, in June 2026, Algorand Foundation published its post-quantum roadmap mapping out the next stages. Native Falcon-1024 accounts, arriving in this release, are a direct product of that roadmap, not a first step.
That first roadmap deliverable is now live, bringing native support for Falcon-1024 accounts.
- You can now create an account protected by a quantum-resilient signature, built directly into the protocol.
- Previously, this kind of protection required an extra layer of custom logic attached to your account. Now it's just how an account can work. Simple, native, built in.
- These addresses are also built so a traditional classical key isn't a valid match for them, keeping them cleanly separated from today's account scheme.
Algorand Foundation is committed to continuous improvement and adaptation to emerging technologies. However, no system is ever completely future-proof, and neither the Algorand protocol nor Algorand Foundation is claiming otherwise. Other parts of the protocol are still migrating over time. Users should stay informed about ongoing developments and updates.
Why this matters for the network's future
Making post-quantum accounts native didn't happen in isolation. It was made possible by a bigger shift in this release: the network now charges fees based on what a transaction actually needs, not a flat rate for everyone. Quantum-resilient signatures are cheaper to verify than a standard signature, but they take up significantly more space in a block, and that added block space is what the extra fee accounts for. This approach aims to price the difference more fairly, which has enabled native support for quantum-resilient accounts.
This is also the first step toward a more sustainable, self-supporting network long term, part of the thinking being considered in the upcoming King Safety paper.
Here's how it works:
- Transactions using more network resources, larger data, or heavier computations carry a higher fee.
- Those fees flow into a shared pool that pays the people running the nodes that keep the network running.
- More usage means more support for the infrastructure the whole network depends on.
Importantly, this isn't a fee hike for everyone. Everyday activity, simple payments, and basic transfers, stay exactly as affordable as they’ve always been. The network is pricing the specific things that actually cost more to process, not raising the bar for everyone else.
And now, for the builders
That same shift toward paying for what you actually use is also what makes a whole set of new developer capabilities possible in this release.
Until now, some of these upgrades simply weren't practical to offer, because there was no fair way to price them. Now there is.
Developers building on Algorand get a genuinely bigger toolkit with this release:
- Bigger, more capable apps. The size limit on smart contracts has doubled. Developers can now build more sophisticated applications without hitting a wall, and existing apps can grow in place, without the painful process of rebuilding from scratch.
- Apps that can share information with each other. Box storage, an app's dedicated data storage, was previously locked away, invisible to every other app. Other states, like global and local, have always been visible to other apps. Now, developers can choose to open that up, letting apps read from, or even collaborate with, other trusted apps. Think of it as apps being able to talk to each other in ways they simply couldn't before.
- New tools for cutting-edge cryptography. This release adds support for hashing techniques that are especially well-suited to zero-knowledge proofs, a technology that lets you prove something is true without revealing the underlying data. It's a growing corner of the crypto world, and the Algorand protocol is now even better equipped for developers building in that space.
- An early look at future network health signals. The upgrade also introduces a new way to measure how busy the network is at any given moment. It doesn't affect anything yet – think of it as a preview – but lays the groundwork for smarter systems down the road.
The bigger picture
The Algorand v5.0.0 upgrade is really one story told in three parts:
- Accounts built to outlast the threats of tomorrow
- a fee model built to sustain the network for the long run
- and a developer toolkit built for what comes next
Taken together, these reinforce that Algorand isn't just reacting to what's coming – we’re ready for it.
This post describes planned work on the Algorand protocol. Any forward-looking statements are subject to change.
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