Open Call#2 Winning Projects: The Results
Q-SAFE Quantum-safe secure firmware updates for smart-grid and constrained IoT devices
Q-SAFE is one of the winning projects of PQ-REACT’s second Open Call. Developed by FAVIT and DATAKORUM under Use Case 1, Smart Energy Meters.
Q-SAFE is focused on making quantum-safe firmware updates operational for smart-grid and constrained IoT devices. The project combines a secure OTA workflow, crypto-agile signed artifacts, device-side verification, rollback and reporting, key/trust-anchor update capability, and Datakorum/DLMS integration for realistic smart-metering delivery.
Key Results
Q-SAFE delivered an end-to-end secure firmware-update workflow in which firmware packages are signed, transferred, received by the target device, verified locally and only then accepted for installation. Beyond the cryptographic benchmark itself, the output is a working validation architecture: the update channel can carry different algorithms and security levels, the device selects the correct verification policy from the artifact metadata, and the platform receives structured telemetry for KPI evidence and post-update reporting.
- Crypto-agile OTA architecture: self-describing signed firmware artifacts carrying algorithm, security level, hash policy and trust-anchor metadata, so the OTA flow does not need to be rebuilt when the signature profile changes.
- Core benchmark evidence: a clean 320-run matrix across four ESP32 targets and ten approved/baseline profiles: ECDSA L1/L3, FN-DSA L1/L5, ML-DSA L2/L3/L5 and SLH-DSA L1/L3/L5, with eight successful repetitions per device/profile combination.
- Operational integration: firmware delivery connected with the Datakorum gateway and DLMS route, including the model where the gateway coordinates transfer but the final installation trust decision remains on the target device.
- Reusable outputs: installation reports, p50/p95 benchmark summaries, phase-level OTA telemetry, rollback/failure-path evidence, RAM/stack and airtime estimates, key-rotation evidence, final reports and consolidated evidence for 100% KPI coverage. A later exploratory campaign also assessed MAYO, CROSS and SQISign as additional candidate families, kept separate from the clean 320-run comparison.
Challenges and Implementation
Since the award, the project moved from a secure-OTA concept to an integrated validation system. The main body of work established the backend/HUB orchestration, firmware packaging and signing flow, device-side verification policy, installation reporting, rollback handling and reproducible telemetry. The clean benchmark then validated 320 successful runs across ECDSA and the NIST post-quantum families FN-DSA, ML-DSA and SLH-DSA on four ESP32-class targets. This gave Q-SAFE a fair comparison baseline before adding the final exploratory work on alternative families.
One challenge was making crypto-agility operational rather than theoretical. It was not enough to compile several algorithms: the firmware artifact had to carry the right metadata, the target had to select the correct verifier and trust anchor, and the platform had to report comparable results. We overcame this by designing the signed trailer/policy model and using the same telemetry schema across devices and profiles. This is what allowed ECDSA, FN-DSA, ML-DSA, SLH-DSA and later alternative candidates to be tested without changing the whole OTA route each time.
A second challenge was separating comparable evidence from exploratory evidence. We kept smoke tests, retries, recovery probes and alternative-algorithm campaigns out of the KPI matrix, and used the fixed 320-run approved/baseline dataset for reporting. This keeps the conclusions defensible while preserving the additional evidence for future selection work.
Project Implementation and Quantum Research Influence
Q-SAFE is intended to be implemented as a partner-ready validation workflow for smart-metering and constrained IoT firmware updates. In practice, firmware can be uploaded, signed with the selected profile, delivered through the operational route and verified on the target before installation. The 320-run benchmark shows that the deployment decision should not be based on assumptions: in this implementation, the global median device-side verification time was 170.5 ms, the median complete OTA duration was 16.42 s, and some NIST post-quantum profiles such as FN-DSA L1 and ML-DSA L2 verified faster than the ECDSA baseline. The operational choice is therefore profile- and device-aware rather than one-size-fits-all.
The expected contribution is to make post-quantum migration measurable and deployable. Q-SAFE connects algorithm benchmarking with the complete firmware-update lifecycle: packaging, signing, key policy, device-side verification, DLMS/Datakorum delivery, rollback and reporting. This gives quantum-security researchers and smart-grid integrators evidence on how NIST-standardised signatures and the classical ECDSA baseline behave under real constrained-device OTA conditions, while the separate alternative campaign provides a roadmap for future algorithm exploration.
The Reflection
“PQ-REACT OC#2 helped Q-SAFE turn quantum-safe firmware updates from a laboratory benchmark into an operational evidence package: 320 comparable ECDSA and NIST post-quantum OTA runs, crypto-agile device verification, key-update capability and a realistic Datakorum/DLMS smart-metering integration path.”
Q-SAFE team, FAVIT