Lurk is a private proof-of-work chain. Every transaction hides who paid, who got paid and how much, and payments to quantum addresses are sealed with lattice cryptography built to outlast Shor's algorithm.
A blockchain never forgets, and anyone can keep a copy. An adversary can archive every transaction today and wait for a quantum computer big enough to run Shor's algorithm. When it arrives, the elliptic-curve secrets that shield receivers and amounts in today's privacy coins open up, all the way back to the first block.
Upgrades only protect what comes after them. A ledger can't take back what it already published.
So Lurk gives every wallet a lattice-sealed address from day one. Payments to an lkq1 address are found with ML-KEM-768 today, and the Blackout upgrade moves spends off elliptic curves next.
Seven building blocks. Each one swaps a piece of public information for a proof that the information checks out.
Every input is signed together with 15 decoys pulled from the chain. The MLSAG signature proves one of the sixteen is yours and says nothing about which.
Quantum addresses publish a lattice key. Each payment encapsulates a fresh secret to it, and only the receiver's secret key can open it again.
Each output lands on a public key made for that payment alone. Ten payments to one wallet look like ten strangers.
Values hide inside commitments with 48-bit range proofs, so nothing negative slips through, and inputs must balance outputs as curve points.
Spending an output reveals a tag that never changes for that output. Reuse it and every node refuses, yet the tag points back to nothing.
Blocks are mined with a memory-hard hash that keeps ordinary CPUs in the game. There are no validator keys, so there's no signing key to break.
The Blackout upgrade moves spend proofs off elliptic curves and hides each spend among every output on the chain, not just sixteen.
What a wallet does to send, and what the chain keeps afterwards. The card shows the latest private transaction on the live chain. Open it in the explorer and press verify to re-check every proof in your own browser.
An lkq1 address bundles a spend key, a view key and an ML-KEM-768 public key. It runs to about 1,700 characters, so wallets always copy it whole.
It encapsulates a shared secret to the receiver's lattice key, then derives a one-time address and a blinding factor from it that nobody else can compute.
The value is locked in a Pedersen commitment, encrypted for the receiver and paired with a 48-bit range proof, so nobody can mint coins out of a negative number.
The wallet draws 15 decoys from the chain, signs an MLSAG over all sixteen and publishes a key image. Your browser does all of it; the node never sees a key.
Nodes check the ring, the range proofs, the balance and the key image before Argon2id miners seal it into a block. Every wallet tests new outputs against its keys, and one finds a match.
Once a quantum computer meets the recorded ledger, does the past stay private?
| lkq1 addressLurk | orchardZcash | ringctMonero | |
|---|---|---|---|
| receiver + amount after q-day | Stays sealed | At risk | At risk |
| privacy | Mandatory on every transaction | Opt-in shielded pools | On by default |
| payment detection | ML-KEM-768 lattices | Elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman | Elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman |
| spends rest on | Ring of 16 now, hash-based at Blackout | Discrete log, Halo 2 | Discrete log, ring signatures |
| trusted setup | None | None for Orchard | None |
Lattice keys and ciphertexts are bigger than the curve points they replace. These figures come from the running chain, not a whitepaper.
One ring signature, two outputs with 48-bit range proofs and one ML-KEM ciphertext.
The ML-KEM-768 ciphertext attached to every payment sent to an lkq1 address.
Most of it is the receiver's 1,184-byte ML-KEM-768 public key.
No ceremony and no toxic waste. Every proof verifies against public parameters.
Ring signatures, stealth outputs, range proofs, ML-KEM quantum addresses, a block explorer, a browser wallet and a faucet.
The token launches on Solana and funds the work all the way to mainnet.
A standalone Argon2id miner, so anyone can mine testnet blocks on a CPU.
Hash-based spend proofs with full-chain anonymity, specified, tested and reviewed in public.
The main chain launches with Blackout active from its genesis block.
Yes. Every transaction uses a genuine ring of 16, one-time addresses and Pedersen commitments with range proofs, plus real ML-KEM-768 for lkq1 addresses. The explorer has no senders, receivers or amounts to show. Each transaction page has a verify in your browser button that re-runs the ring signature, range proof and balance checks on your own device.
Ring signatures are fast and well understood, and no quantum computer can break them yet. The part that leaks backwards in time is who received what and how much, so Lurk protects that first with ML-KEM. Blackout replaces the rings with hash-based proofs.
On your device. The wallet generates a 32-byte seed in your browser and derives the spend key, view key and ML-KEM key from it. The node never sees any of them, so back up the seed.
tLURK comes from the faucet and is worth nothing. $LURK is the Solana token that funds development and carries the project to mainnet.
Yes. The node, explorer and wallet ship as one open-source Node.js app. Clone it, run npm install and npm start, and the whole chain runs on your machine.
Once Blackout has been specified, tested and reviewed in public. Dates will be announced on our channels first.