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The prior thread on Quantum tag reform did not discuss , and there are many more questions tagged . The dominant nomenclature seems to be post-quantum, not quantum-resistant—see, e.g., https://pqcrypto.org/, the NIST PQC project, the PQCrypto conference, etc.

The tag wiki reads

Some conventional, standardized algorithms are quantum-resistant without being explicitly designed for it. A notable example of this is AES, which is widely considered to be secure against attacks with quantum computers if a key size of 256 bits is used.

but this distinction doesn't seem to make much of a difference—it's not clear to me that this is helpful for sorting questions, and it's less clear that there's been any adherence to this distinction in the tag usage.

Does the tag serve a useful purpose? Should we replace it by ?

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  • $\begingroup$ Note to potential answerers: While I have provided default voting targets, anyone may still add an answer if it adds substantial reasoning (for either side) or even provides a third alternative worth exploration. $\endgroup$
    – SEJPM
    Aug 23, 2019 at 17:49
  • $\begingroup$ I just executed the merge (which includes removing the old tag from all questions and instead adding the pq-crypto tag and creating the synonym). $\endgroup$
    – SEJPM
    Sep 15, 2019 at 9:02

2 Answers 2

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Yes, we should abandon and merge it into , making it a synonym and replacing all appearances of the former with the latter.

Resistance of classic constructs could also be considered part of PQC and there is a tag that can be used in addition.

This is one of the default two voting targets so we don't have to figure out what people want from the votes on the question.

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  • $\begingroup$ I encourage anyone who has additional reasons for the merge beyond those in the question to edit this community wiki answer. $\endgroup$
    – SEJPM
    Aug 23, 2019 at 17:48
  • $\begingroup$ Associate different categories with these terms: Resistance appears to me as security measure, where Cryptography is a scientific discipline, PQC as sub-discipline. $\endgroup$
    – Sam Ginrich
    Feb 7, 2022 at 17:26
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No, we should keep them separate.

Quantum resistance may be more applicable to classic constructs such as symmetric ciphers and hashes that are quantum resistant without being explicitly designed as PQC algorithms.

This is one of the default two voting targets so we don't have to figure out what people want from the votes on the question.

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  • $\begingroup$ I encourage anyone who has a good reason to keep them separate to edit this community wiki answer. $\endgroup$
    – SEJPM
    Aug 23, 2019 at 17:46
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    $\begingroup$ I've added a good reason, but I voted for the other option, since I think the PQC term should be broad enough to also include analysis of classic constructs. $\endgroup$
    – Maarten Bodewes Mod
    Aug 23, 2019 at 22:34
  • $\begingroup$ It might help to give examples substantiating this. I don't see a need to distinguish the post-quantum security of existing algorithms from the post-quantum security of novel algorithms that were designed specifically for post-quantum security, and I haven't seen evidence that this distinction makes a difference for categorization of questions. $\endgroup$
    – Squeamish Ossifrage
    Aug 28, 2019 at 18:15

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