What is Frost

Frost is a Layer 1 blockchain that runs the Ethereum Virtual Machine and speaks the Ethereum JSON-RPC protocol, but replaces the one thing Ethereum cannot easily replace: the signature scheme that authorises transactions.

On Ethereum, an account is an ECDSA key. The address is derived from the public key, and the protocol recovers that public key from the signature on every transaction. That design is compact and elegant, and it is exactly what makes the scheme hard to change — the account model and the signature algorithm are the same object.

Frost separates them. Authorisation is decided by contract code that the account owner chooses, and the protocol provides native verifiers for post-quantum signature schemes so that code is cheap to run. An account can be secured by ML-DSA — the lattice signature scheme standardised as FIPS 204 — and still behave like an ordinary Ethereum account to everything downstream of it.

What is different

Accounts are contracts. There is no post-quantum externally-owned account, and there was never going to be: an ML-DSA-65 public key is 1,952 bytes, which does not fit in a 20-byte address, and lattice signatures have no public-key recovery, so the ecrecover trick that makes Ethereum addresses work has no post-quantum analogue. Instead each account is a small contract that holds its own public key and checks its own signatures. See Accounts and keys.

Transactions carry frames. Frost implements EIP-8141, a draft proposal to make Ethereum signature-agnostic. A frame transaction (type 0x06) replaces “one call authorised by one ECDSA signature” with “an ordered list of frames to execute, a list of signature entries the account may interpret however it likes, and an explicit sender.” See Frame transactions.

Signature verification is a precompile. Verifying ML-DSA in Solidity would cost millions of gas. Frost adds two native verifiers, 0x14 VERIFY_MLDSA65 and 0x15 VERIFY_MLDSA44, priced at throughput parity with ecrecover. A post-quantum signature check costs about as much as five ECDSA recoveries.

Ordering is fee-blind. Blocks are built from a consensus-determined order and executed FIFO. A priority fee buys no position, no inclusion priority, and no latency; eth_maxPriorityFeePerGas returns zero. The EIP-1559 base fee is the entire fee market. See Fees and ordering.

Consensus is a DAG, not a chain of proposals. Frost pairs its execution layer with a Mysticeti V2 consensus layer, which orders transactions through a DAG of certified blocks rather than a single leader per slot. Consensus blocks are themselves signed post-quantum. See Architecture and Consensus and blocks.

What is the same

Deliberately, almost everything else:

• The EVM, at the Osaka feature level. Solidity contracts compile and deploy unchanged, and every Ethereum precompile is present at its usual address.
• The JSON-RPC surface. eth_getBalance, eth_call, eth_getLogs, eth_sendRawTransaction and the rest behave as you expect.
• Standard transaction types. Legacy, EIP-1559 and EIP-4844 transactions are all valid; frame transactions are an addition, not a replacement.
• Addresses, nonces, receipts, logs, and the state trie.

This matters because it is what lets an ecosystem exist. A DEX, a block explorer, and a multicall contract all run on Frost without modification — the ecosystem page lists what is deployed today.

The network

• RPChttps://rpc.frostfi.net
• Chain ID8141
• Explorerhttps://explorer.frostfi.net
• Faucethttps://faucet.frostfi.net

Full parameters are on the Chain parameters page, and Connect to Frost covers what the public endpoint will and will not do.

Where to go next

If you want to use the chain, go to Quickstart — it takes you from nothing to a funded post-quantum account that has sent a transaction.

If you want to understand it first, read Why post-quantum, then Frame transactions, then Accounts and keys. Those three pages are the conceptual core; everything else in Learn is elaboration.

If you want the exact bytes, the Reference section is normative, and the Design section explains why the choices there are what they are.