BIP-360 is a technical proposal aimed at protecting Bitcoin from quantum computing threats through a new type of address. The standard, called Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR), proposes the creation of a SegWit version 2 exit that hides a user’s public key and prevents it from being exposed on the blockchain before use.
This document was officially incorporated and assigned to the official Bitcoin repository on February 11 of this year. The public announcement was made by Marc Erhardt, also known as “March,” an engineer at Localhost Research and the official editor of BIP. This step will: The work enters the formal draft stage; Enables technical analysis and discussion by the Bitcoin Core developer community.
A Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP), on the other hand, is a technical document that serves as a standard for introducing changes, new features, or fixes to the protocol. Anyone can submit a proposal, but it must go through a rigorous review and consensus process by the developer community before it is considered official.
The primary purpose of BIP-360 is to neutralize “long exposure” attacks. With the current address format, public key visibility is Enables quantum computers with sufficient power to derive private keys. P2MR uses hash resiliency, so attackers cannot process data while funds are stored. These addresses use the bc1z prefix and reveal only the information necessary to validate transactions issued to the network.
BIP-360 aims to ease the “harvest now, decode later” strategy (Harvest now, decrypt later) By preventing public keys from being permanently recorded Readable on the blockchain. By using the P2MR format, funds remain protected with hashes that are opaque to today’s attackers, preventing them from collecting the data they currently need to perform future quantum computing key recovery attacks.
Origin and development of the BIP-360 proposal
As reported by CriptoNoticias, the initiative has been in development since December 2024. Led by researchers Hunter Beast, Ethan Heilman, and Isabel Foxn Duke. The team has been working on defining an output type that inherits the benefits of Taproot while eliminating the vulnerabilities present in Taproot. Represents the public key public of an elliptic curve signature Given advances in advanced computing.
The authors elaborate that this measure focuses on protecting the long-term storage of funds. Although it does not eliminate the risk of “short exposure” (the interval a transaction waits in the memory pool until it is confirmed), this proposal establishes a structural foundation. Required to integrate post-quantum signatures In the future, there will be no need to make breaking changes to protocol consensus.
The assignment of a BIP number and addition to the GitHub repository on February 11 of this year provides a formal framework for technical discussion. your publications Does not represent instant activation Although there is no consensus on its implementation, it begins the standard review and testing process for changes to Bitcoin software.
(Tag Translation)Bitcoin (BTC)
