Algorand's 2.7 million post-quantum transactions, and the printer behind a million of them

Algorand's official account¹ declared the network first in the industry for post-quantum transactions on October 17, 2026, citing 'over 2.7 MILLION' on mainnet. The user transactions behind the figure are real, each one signed with a Falcon key and settled for a fee. What the figure measures is narrower: two automated sources supplied about three quarters of the transactions PXke counted since August, and a third stream more than a tenth.

Pera Wallet will create a native Falcon-1024 account for any user who asks, and such an account signs transactions like any other. Printing from one is a browser job rather than an engineering project.

The figure is already traveling as evidence that users are moving to quantum accounts. The count itself measures transactions, not the number of people sending them.

What each counter counts

The claim's second half, 'more than any other blockchain on the planet,²' rests on a leaderboard rather than a protocol statistic. The board on wen.tools³ puts Algorand at about 2.68 million⁴ native Falcon-1024 transactions against about 1.97 million for QRL, a stated lead of about 714,000.

Neither counter reaches 2.7 million⁵. Pera's explorer⁶ read 2,611,114 on October 19 under the caption 'Transactions signed with quantum resilient signature,' a wording that does not say whether inner transactions are included. State Proofs close the gap: Falcon-signed checkpoints the protocol produces every 256⁷ rounds, which the Foundation counted at '140K+' transactions⁸ in March. Add the roughly 166,000 of them now to the user transactions on the chain at the end of October 17, and the total lands near 2.75 million. The arithmetic fits the headline without proving it, because the Foundation has not said what its figure includes.

TokenPost⁹, reporting the claim on October 18, put the distinction the other way: State Proofs 'serve a different purpose from signatures that authorize transactions from user accounts,¹⁰' it wrote, and consensus signing still uses Ed25519. Read that way, 2.7 million¹¹ counts account signing, not a network that is quantum-safe end to end.

The printer

The tool is small, free and pleasant to use. The PQ Tx Printer³ generates a Falcon account inside a browser tab. It then 'prints post-quantum transactions until the fees run dry.¹²' One click produced a working quantum address with no wallet connection. The page says setup costs two quantum transactions and a 0.0317¹³ ALGO deposit, refunded when the printer closes out.

The contract it calls was created on October 15, 2026, and its own counter reads 1,011,630 prints. PXke's count of the window attributes about 994,500 quantum-signed transactions to it between October 15 and October 19, sent by 43 accounts. Those accounts were disposable: each was funded with roughly the fees for its calls, printed, then closed back to the same funder. One ended by returning about 0.13 ALGO to a different wallet after the contract paid back its 0.032 ALGO deposit.

The coupon it pays out, PQPRINT, has no manager, freeze or clawback role, so nobody can stop a printer or take a coupon back. Twenty-eight wallets hold it. The printer page and the coupon contract entered the wen-tools GitHub repository¹⁴ on October 15.

Its counter alone is larger than the 714,000¹⁵-transaction lead the leaderboard credits. A ranking assembled that way cannot be read as a measure of how many people use quantum accounts.

Two days, and the number 1,000

The leaderboard's own code records where it started: Algorand at about 1.80 million post-quantum transactions, QRL at about 1.97 million, a gap of roughly 172,000. The board's author recorded Algorand behind the chain it now leads.

Then the burst. The count stood near 1.87 million before the printer opened on the afternoon of October 15, and about 2.58 million by the end of October 16. The '#1¹⁶' post followed within a day.

A round number explains why so many payments are identical. Pera pays commemorative badges at one, 100¹⁷ and 1,000¹⁸ transactions. In a stretch from August 26 to September 4, 998 accounts each sent exactly 1,000 zero-ALGO payments to a single address. That batch alone is about 999,600 transactions, more than a third of the window PXke read. The address's last dust payment arrived at 23:06:08 UTC on September 4. The Foundation's August report¹⁹ read those weeks as showing 'meaningful usage intensity among early adopters.²⁰' Most of the transactions it described were this batch.

An earlier stream is plainer still. Twenty-four accounts send one asset transfer about every five minutes, roughly 7,500 a day since September 2, some 351,800 transactions, and all were first funded by the same address. Through October 14, that stream was most of the count's daily growth.

The badge, sold by the set

The badge is now a retail product. AlgoRoll's Quantum NFT Farm²¹ sells 1,000²² post-quantum transactions plus Pera's three quantum badges for 4.5²³ ALGO. It states the effect plainly: '1,000 Falcon-signed transactions are added to Algorand’s count by every Quantum NFT set.' It reports 23,000 transactions farmed and 69 badges delivered. Delivery runs on chain: a badge leaves a holding account for another wallet in a group that also carries a 0.1²⁴ ALGO payment and a call to the delivery contract.

That the count can be bought is not evidence that all of it was. The badges show how few wallets are involved: 701²⁵ hold Quantum Pioneer, 273²⁶ hold Quantum Vanguard and 185²⁷ hold Quantum Sentinel. Pera's reserve holds 95,000²⁸ of the Sentinel's 100,000²⁹ supply. In September the Foundation wrote³⁰ that 'A significant share of the quantum transaction volume is coming from Pera’s commemorative NFTs.³¹'

The other side of the race

Both chains are counted generously, and one board says so outright: AlgoRoll's states, 'Each chain is ranked by its most generous figure.³²' For Algorand that means adding protocol State Proofs to user transactions. For QRL the board uses the signed-only figure, which Quantascan³³ now headlines at 1,969,154 while stating that coinbase rewards are unsigned and not counted.

Which QRL number is used changes the answer. QRL's explorer counts blocks alongside signed transactions and states that each block's coinbase reward is unsigned, so a total including them would sit far above the signed figure. A QRL technical adviser has reportedly argued his chain still leads on that broader count. On signed transactions Algorand leads; on all transactions QRL does.

The forum thread under the claim split along the same line. One reply cited QRL's longer total, another questioned the site that published it, and neither settled what the comparison should count.

What a reader can do

Badge eligibility is checked at claim.perawallet.app³⁴, which reads a wallet's public transaction history and asks for no signature. Pera opens the same door from the app, where a new quantum account takes a few taps, or an existing one can be rekeyed and keep its address.