- What does the QRL daily block size chart show?
- It shows the average serialized size of a block, in kilobytes, for each day — drawn as one continuous line spanning the original Proof-of-Work chain and QRL 2.0. It measures how much data the average block carries, not how many transactions it confirms.
- Why are QRL blocks the size they are?
- Because QRL is quantum-resistant, every transaction is signed with a large post-quantum signature. On QRL 2.0 each transaction carries an ML-DSA-87 signature of about 4,600 bytes; on the Proof-of-Work chain an XMSS signature of about 2,500–2,600 bytes. For comparison, a classical ECDSA signature on Bitcoin or Ethereum is only about 64–72 bytes — so a single QRL transaction is tens of times larger. Those signatures dominate the byte count, so any block carrying transactions jumps by several kilobytes.
- Why are post-quantum signatures so large?
- Classical signatures like ECDSA stay tiny (~64–72 bytes) because their security rests on elliptic-curve math — which a large quantum computer could eventually break. Quantum-resistant schemes trade size for safety: the Proof-of-Work chain's XMSS is hash-based and QRL 2.0's ML-DSA-87 is lattice-based, and both need thousands of bytes to encode a signature instead of dozens. That extra weight is the price of staying secure against quantum attacks, and it is exactly what this chart makes visible.
- Why is block size measured in kilobytes?
- Raw block size is counted in bytes, but a single signed transaction already runs to several thousand bytes, so the chart divides by 1,024 and plots kilobytes for readable axis numbers. A value of 2 KB means the average block that day serialized to about 2,048 bytes. Most QRL blocks carry few or no transactions, so the daily average sits near the size of an empty block and rises as signed-transaction load grows.
- Does the chart combine the Proof-of-Work chain and QRL 2.0?
- Yes. The Proof-of-Work history runs first, then QRL 2.0 takes over at the migration hand-over, drawn as one continuous timeline. Because the metric is bytes per block on both chains, the two eras are directly comparable — though QRL 2.0's larger ML-DSA signatures lift the baseline above the XMSS era. The range buttons window the whole line from the most recent day.
- How is this different from daily blocks?
- Daily blocks counts how many blocks were produced — a near-constant ~1,440 per day at the 60-second target. Daily block size measures how heavy each block is in bytes, which rises and falls with how many signed transactions it carries. A quiet day still produces ~1,440 blocks, but each one is smaller.