⚡ Stage 5 — Prototype Active ✓ Live on Stagenet

Layer 2 – SOQ Lightning

The world's first quantum-safe payment channel network. Single-hop channels with Dilithium ML-DSA-44 signed state updates, running on Stagenet today.

⚡ Prototype Status — ELTOO Channels Active

Single-hop ELTOO payment channels are live on Stagenet with real L1 settlement, Dilithium-signed state updates, CTV + CSV covenant scripts, and QR-based peer exchange. Channel opening, off-chain payments, and cooperative closes are operational in SoquShield. No watchtowers required — ELTOO's state supersession eliminates the need for third-party monitoring. Multi-hop routing is the next engineering milestone.

<500ms
Payment Latency
off-chain
2,420B
Dilithium Signatures
ML-DSA-44
✓ LIVE
Stagenet Prototype
May 2026
100%
Quantum-Safe
every signature

⚡ Lightning Playground

Experience quantum-safe payment channels firsthand. Open SoquShield, scan a QR, and watch your first L2SOQ channel come to life.

STEP 1 · SCAN INVITE

Open SoquShield → L2 Lightning → Open Channel → paste this invite to open a channel with the Playground peer.

CHANNEL STATUS
peer SOQ-PLAYGROUND
capacity 1,000 SOQ
signature ML-DSA-44
witness v6 (P2WSH)
CSV delay 144 blocks
● READY TO SCAN
INVITE URI
1
Copy Invite
Tap COPY above and paste into SoquShield's Open Channel sheet
2
Channel Opens
SoquShield funds the channel on L1 with a 2-of-2 Dilithium multisig
3
Send & Receive
Exchange Dilithium-signed state updates off-chain in milliseconds

Active Engineering

Single-hop channels are operational. Here's what we're building next to reach multi-hop payments.

🔐 PQ Adaptor Signatures

Multi-hop atomic payments require adaptor signatures for trustless forwarding. Dilithium doesn't natively support this primitive. We're evaluating hash-based alternatives and lattice-compatible constructions.

Active Research

📦 State Compression

Dilithium signatures are 2,420 bytes each. ELTOO's update mechanism means only the latest state matters — old states are simply superseded, not accumulated. PAT batching on L1 settlement further reduces on-chain footprint.

Solved by ELTOO

✅ No Watchtowers Required

Unlike Bitcoin Lightning (LN-Penalty), Soqucoin uses ELTOO-style channels via CTV + CSV covenants. Any newer state supersedes any older state — no penalty transactions, no revocation secrets, no third-party monitoring infrastructure.

Eliminated by Design

🗺️ Multi-Hop Coordination

Routing payments across multiple channels requires payment path discovery and fee negotiation. The gossip protocol must handle 1,312-byte public keys efficiently. Network topology design is in progress.

Design Phase

ELTOO Channel Architecture

Covenant-native design. No penalty transactions. No watchtowers. Any newer state supersedes any older state.

L2SOQ ELTOO CHANNEL LIFECYCLE
FUND TX
2-of-2 Dilithium
P2WSH (witness v6)
CTV commit hash
→ L1 confirmed
OFF-CHAIN UPDATES
State #0 → #1 → #2 → ... → #N
Each signed ML-DSA-44
⚡ ELTOO: #N supersedes all
No revocation secrets stored
SETTLE TX
Cooperative or force-close
CSV timelock: 144 blocks
LatticeFold+ batch verify
→ L1 settled
CTV (0xb3)
Locks output to a specific spend template — the settlement distribution is committed at fund time
CSV (0xb2)
Relative timelock gives counterparty 144 blocks (~2.4 hours) to broadcast a newer state
ELTOO
Any state #N can replace #M (where N > M). No penalty. No watchtower. Just publish the latest state.

Throughput Analysis

Real numbers derived from measured cryptographic benchmarks, not theoretical maximums.

NETWORK-WIDE THROUGHPUT AT SCALE
500,000+
transactions per second
Scales linearly with active channels — no fixed ceiling
PER-CHANNEL STATE UPDATE ROUND-TRIP
SIGN
0.177
ms
SEND
~25
ms
VERIFY
0.041
ms
SIGN
0.177
ms
SEND
~25
ms
VERIFY
0.041
ms
TOTAL CRYPTO OVERHEAD
0.436 ms
BOTTLENECK
Network latency, not crypto
LOCAL / DEMO
2,300
TPS per channel
~0 ms latency
SAME CITY
410
TPS per channel
~2 ms latency
AVG INTERNET
20
TPS per channel
~50 ms latency
CROSS-CONTINENT
10
TPS per channel
~100 ms latency
NETWORK-WIDE TPS = ACTIVE CHANNELS × AVG TPS PER CHANNEL
PHASE CHANNELS AVG TPS/CH NETWORK TPS
Stagenet (now) 1–10 20 20–200
Early Mainnet (Year 1) 500–2,000 10 5,000–20,000
Growth (Year 2–3) 5,000–20,000 15 75,000–300,000
At Scale 50,000+ 15 750,000+
For reference: Bitcoin Lightning has ~60,000–80,000 channels today.
L1 (ON-CHAIN)
~43
TPS with PAT
4MB blocks · PAT aggregation · LatticeFold+ batch verify
Without PAT: ~17 TPS (each tx carries ~2.4 KB Dilithium sig)
With PAT: ~43 TPS (1,024 sigs → 100-byte proof, 2.5× density gain)
LatticeFold+: 512 sigs verified in 0.175 ms vs 90 ms sequential
L2 (OFF-CHAIN)
750K+
TPS at scale
No fixed ceiling · scales with channels
ELTOO Throughput Advantage
Bitcoin Lightning (LN-Penalty) requires an extra round-trip per update to exchange revocation secrets. ELTOO eliminates this — just sign the new state. Channels also never slow down with age: LN-Penalty channels accumulate revocation data, while ELTOO channels have constant overhead regardless of how many payments have been made.

Architectural Advantages

Soqucoin's L1 foundation provides structural advantages no classical L2 can match.

🔐 End-to-End Quantum Safety

Funding Transaction BTC: ECDSASOQ: Dilithium
State Updates BTC: ECDSASOQ: Dilithium
Channel Model BTC: LN-PenaltySOQ: ELTOO
On-Chain Settlement BTC: ECDSASOQ: Dilithium

⚡ L1 Advantages

L1 Block Time BTC: 10 minSOQ: 1 min
Channel Open BTC: ~60 minSOQ: ~6 min
Batch Settlement BTC: N/ASOQ: LatticeFold+
Watchtowers BTC: RequiredSOQ: Not needed

🛡️ ELTOO-Native Design

CTV + CSV covenants enable ELTOO channels from genesis. No penalty transactions, no revocation secrets — the simplest possible channel construction.

📦 LatticeFold+ Settlement

L1's audited batch verification infrastructure enables efficient settlement of multiple channel closes in a single proof (0.68 ms for 512 signatures).

🔑 L2-Ready Wallet (Active)

HKDF key derivation is already powering channel funding, state signing, and peer exchange in the Stagenet prototype. No seed migration needed.

⏱️ 10× Faster Settlement

1-minute L1 blocks mean channel opens confirm in ~6 minutes (6 confirmations) and force-close CSV timelocks resolve in ~2.4 hours vs ~24 hours on Bitcoin.

Development Roadmap

Single-hop channels are live on Stagenet. Multi-hop routing and L2 mainnet deployment follow the L1 launch and security audit.

Complete
Q2 2026

Foundation

L2-ready wallet, HKDF key derivation, QR peer exchange, CTV + CSV covenant activations

Current
Q2 2026

Stagenet Prototype

Single-hop ELTOO channels with Dilithium-signed state updates, cooperative close, deterministic channel IDs

Q3 2026

Multi-Hop Design

Payment routing, hash-based forwarding alternatives, network topology, fee market design

Adaptor signature research ongoing
Q2–Q3 2026

L1 Mainnet Launch

Genesis block, merge mining activation, exchange listings. L2 continues development on Stagenet.

Q3–Q4 2026

L2 Security Audit

External audit of channel protocol, force-close paths, covenant scripts, and wallet integration

Post-Audit

L2 Mainnet Deploy

L2SOQ activation on mainnet via BIP9 soft-fork. No hard fork required — covenant opcodes already active.

Our Approach

"We built a production L1 with native Dilithium signatures from genesis. Then we proved that quantum-safe payment channels aren't just theoretically possible—they work. Single-hop channels are live on Stagenet today with real ML-DSA-44 signed state updates, QR-based peer exchange, and L1 settlement. The first quantum-safe Lightning channel in the world didn't come from a research lab—it came from shipping code."

Soqucoin Team · May 2026

Follow Our Research

Track our progress on L2 development. We publish updates as we solve problems and hit milestones.