A draft Bitcoin Enchancment Proposal authored by Casa co-founder Jameson Lopp and 5 collaborators units out probably the most forceful roadmap but for hardening the community towards quantum computing. Titled “Submit-Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Sundown,” the proposal was revealed on GitHub on 14 July and requires a phased retirement of all outputs protected by as we speak’s ECDSA and Schnorr signatures. The authors body the transfer as a needed pre-emptive strike: “It turns quantum safety into a non-public incentive — fail to improve and you’ll definitely lose entry to your funds.”
Plan To Safe Bitcoin From Quantum Risk
As a result of each public key that seems on-chain can, in precept, have its corresponding personal key recovered by a sufficiently highly effective quantum pc, the proposal warns that “roughly 25 % of all bitcoin have revealed a public key on-chain; these UTXOs may very well be stolen with enough quantum energy.” That slice consists of many early P2PK outputs, amongst them the roughly a million BTC broadly believed to be managed by Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.
The authors observe that NIST finalised three production-grade post-quantum signature algorithms in 2024 and that tutorial roadmaps now place a “cryptographically-relevant” quantum pc as early as 2027-2030. On the identical time, quantum factoring algorithms “are bettering as much as 20×,” quickly shrinking Bitcoin’s security margin.
To neutralise the menace, the draft prescribes a soft-fork sequence tied to the already-proposed P2QRH post-quantum output sort (outlined in BIP-360):
Part A begins three years after P2QRH goes reside and “disallows sending of any funds to quantum-vulnerable addresses,” forcing new cash towards quantum-safe scripts.
Part B follows two years later, on a pre-announced flag day, when “nodes reject transactions that depend on ECDSA/Schnorr keys,” rendering legacy outputs unspendable.
Part C is non-obligatory and, pending additional analysis, may allow house owners who missed the deadline to get better funds with a zero-knowledge proof of possession of their BIP-39 seed.
The doc’s rationale is specific: “A profitable quantum assault on Bitcoin would end in important financial disruption and harm throughout the whole ecosystem.” By imposing a identified deadline, the authors hope to beat what they describe as “improve inertia” amongst wallets, exchanges and custodians that traditionally stretches protocol roll-outs over a few years.
Every stakeholder cohort is obtainable a blunt calculus. Miners danger producing “invalid blocks” after Part B if they don’t improve, however within the interim can count on heavier blocks and better charges from the bigger post-quantum signatures. Institutional holders face potential fiduciary legal responsibility ought to they ignore the migration timetable, whereas exchanges confront the prospect of in a single day insolvency if quantum attackers drain custodial sizzling wallets. For particular person customers, the sundown date converts an summary, far-off menace into a tough deadline.
A notable corollary is that cash deserted in quantum-vulnerable scripts would turn into completely frozen, echoing Satoshi’s early commentary that “misplaced cash solely make everybody else’s cash value barely extra.” The proposal inverts that logic for quantum-recovered cash, calling them “a theft from everybody.”
The BIP stays a draft and has but to obtain a quantity or taproot-style activation path, however it’s already shaping what’s more likely to turn into a contentious debate over backward compatibility and the remedy of dormant balances. If adopted, the migration would dwarf SegWit and Taproot in each logistical complexity and financial stakes, instantly affecting an estimated quarter of the 19.7 million BTC in existence.
For now, the authors have thrown down a transparent gauntlet: both the ecosystem coordinates on a proactive timeline, or it faces the prospect of responding to an emergency solely after the primary quantum theft has occurred.
At press time, BTC traded at $118,623.
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