“Bitcoin’s post-quantum three-week reaction has moved faster than any protocol debate I can remember,” Anastasia Marchenkova, a quantum computing researcher and analyst, wrote in an April 21 X post.
According to her analysis, the expert created a chronology of recent events that turned a long technical discussion into one in a matter of weeks. Urgent discussions leading to concrete proposals on the table.
According to Marchenkova, two things are accelerating the post-quantum discussion in the ecosystem: paper A paper published on March 30 significantly reduced estimates of the quantum hardware needed to breach Bitcoin encryption.
The first, as reported by CriptoNoticias, is powered by Google Quantum AI; 500,000 physical qubits are enough to break through the ECDSA schemeused by Bitcoin and Ethereum, takes about 9 minutes.
The second paper Marchenkova pointed to was from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Oratomic, where she pointed out that Scholl’s algorithm (the mathematical procedure that quantum computers use to derive private keys) can be implemented in the following way: Reconfigurable neutral atoms with just 10,000 qubits.
According to Marchenkova, the situation unfolded with extraordinary speed. On April 7, Blockstream co-founder Adam Back said: Bitcoin still has 10 years to transition For quantum resistant keys. On the same day, Cloudflare announced its own post-quantum transition plan for 2029. paper Triggered by Google Quantum AI and that of Caltech. They did the same with Grayscale and Coinbase.
Similarly, on April 9, Marchenkova went on to announce that StarkWare developers: Migration proposal based on hash function Although this does not require any changes to the Bitcoin protocol, it does incur a computational cost of between $75 and $150 per transaction.
BIP-361: Proposals highlighted by Marchenkova
The quantum computing expert highlighted in her timeline BIP-361, a Bitcoin improvement proposal published by developer Jameson Ropp and five other co-authors on April 14th. BIP-361 establishes three phases.
- The first enables a spontaneous transition to quantum computer-resistant signatures.
- The second is to invalidate legacy signatures (ECDSA scheme and current Schnorr signatures) five years after activation. Affects approximately 1.7 million BTC At the address where the public key was published, including idle funds attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto.
- Third, it incorporates a cryptographic proof mechanism, allowing owners of unpublished keys to migrate without revealing their keys.
Although Marchenkova did not mention everything, BIP-361, which caused a notable negative reaction from some parts of the Bitcoiner community, is not the only reaction the Bitcoin ecosystem has developed during this period.
On March 31st, Blockstream, co-founded by Adam Back, announced SHRIMPS, a new post-quantum signature scheme for Bitcoin. Adding another possible solutionbut it has not been formalized in the official Bitcoin repository.
Additionally, in mid-February, BIP-360, a technology proposal that seeks to protect Bitcoin from quantum computing threats through a new type of address called Merkle Root Payments (P2MR), was published.
Ethereum has advantages in the post-quantum era, according to researchers
Finally, Marchenkova points out that Ethereum has an advantage in this race since the Ethereum Foundation (EF) formed a post-quantum team last January, one of whose researchers co-authored paper Google Quantum AI and its organizations have allocated US$2 million in awards for post-quantum cryptography research.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, faces the problem of having no centralized governance and no recovery mechanism after the private key is derived by a quantum computer, exposing it to greater structural risks.
Marchenkova concluded that the speed of the debate is a symptom in itself. The migration, which was said to take 10 years, is being shortened as those who must take action begin to take the problem seriously.
(Tag translation) Bitcoin (BTC)
