BTQ Technologies announced on June 9th this year through the BTQ Insider series that the so-called one shot signature (OSS): A digital signature method in which the private key exists as a quantum state and is destroyed at the time of signing.
The project, which is in full development, and the demonstration of its impact on Bitcoin protection was led by Gavin Brennen, the company’s scientific director, and Chris Tam, former president of BTQ. Both, due to the principle of quantum decloning, Private keys cannot be copied or reused: When you sign a message, the quantum state irreversibly collapses.
A signature can be verified by anyone who has the corresponding public key, but the act of signing is destroy the ability to start over. The company says this solves an issue that traditional schemes cannot reliably guarantee, where approval only occurs once.
BTQ is a Nasdaq (BTQ) and CBOE Canada-listed quantum technology company founded by cryptographers specializing in post-quantum security. its relevance This is because we develop both hardware and software aimed at protecting critical networks. Before quantum computers arrived on a large scale. Brennen is also a professor of physics at Macquarie University in Sydney and has more than 20 years’ experience in the field.
This effort is part of an active discussion within the ecosystem in light of the possible arrival of Q-Day.
CriptoNoticias reported that Google Quantum AI researchers have determined that a quantum computer with millions of qubits could potentially break Bitcoin’s elliptic curve cryptography in the time it takes to mine a block.
In this regard, Israeli mathematician Gil Karai argues that quantum error correction is ineffective on a large scale, making this type of attack infeasible. However, the actual deadline remains under debate.
New signature schemes and their applications in Bitcoin
BTQ suggestion Some of the vulnerabilities that quantum computing brings to ECDSA elliptic curve signaturesa digital signature system that secures Bitcoin transactions. If an attacker with sufficient quantum capabilities gains access to a public key published on-chain, they can potentially obtain the private key and move the owner’s funds without consent.
Russ one shot signature They are trying to neutralize that vector. There is no recoverable or reusable private key, as it is destroyed each time it is used. According to the company, use cases go beyond Bitcoin and include:
- Interbank transactions only need to be performed once
- disposable authorization token
- Medical record release with single-access traceability
BTQ points out that the implementation looks like this: Requires special quantum hardware. The company, through its subsidiary QPerfect, plans to complete version 1 of its quantum logic unit (QLU) around mid-2027. This is done as a preliminary step to running OSS on a real neutral atom platform.
Burn He claimed in an interview that this path integrates ideas from quantum computing. And classical cryptography in a way that doesn’t require the quantum internet to function: a single access to the quantum device at the time of signing is enough.
However, not all experts share the same enthusiasm. Disposable signatures are an interesting approach based on quantum principles, but still in a very early stage of development. Its practical implementation requires affordable and reliable quantum hardware, which currently does not exist at scale.
There are other more mature post-quantum approaches, such as lattice-based approaches (lattice base) o hash (hash base), there is already a standard defined by NIST and is being actively tested with suggestions for improvements to Bitcoin.
All of these alternatives also have size and efficiency challenges, but because they have academic consensus and do not rely on specialized quantum hardware, they may become more feasible in the short to medium term.
