Table 5.
Ablation study on the role of quantum components in QuantumShield-BC.
| Configuration | Leader selection entropy | Attack resistance (simulated) | Consensus fairness | Communication security | TPS impact |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full quantum (QRNG + QKD + PQC) | High | All attacks mitigated | High | Strong (QKD-based) | Baseline |
| QRNG → PRNG | Low | Predictive leader attacks | Medium | Unaffected | + 2% |
| QKD → classical key exchange (ECDH) | High | Vulnerable to MITM | High | Weak | + 5% |
| PQC → ECDSA | High | Broken under Shor’s attack | High | Moderate | + 4% |
| All quantum components replaced | Low | All attacks succeed | Low | Very Weak | + 7% |