Bitcoin researchers have come up with a way to instantly make Bitcoin transactions quantum secure without the need for a soft fork.
In a proposal published Thursday, StarkWare chief product officer Avihu Levy proposed a quantum-secure Bitcoin (QSB) trading scheme that he said could remain secure “even against adversaries equipped with large-scale quantum computers running Scholl’s algorithm.”
He added that the scheme requires no changes to the Bitcoin protocol and works entirely within the constraints of existing legacy scripts. The downside is that it is costly and likely not useful for everyday transactions, he said.
The Bitcoin community is divided on how to approach quantum problems. QSB offers a temporary solution while solving a long-term approach.
The main feature of this scheme is to replace the proof-of-work signature-size puzzle with a hash-to-signature puzzle.
Instead of relying on elliptic curve mathematics that quantum computers can decipher, spenders must find an input whose hashed output randomly resembles a valid ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) signature. This requires brute force work that even quantum computers cannot take shortcuts against.
Quantum-secure Bitcoin is not practical for everyday use
However, there are caveats to this proposal. The sender costs between $75 and $150 per transaction in GPU computing and is more complex than a typical Bitcoin transaction, so it only makes sense when securing Bitcoin at scale. $BTC transaction.
Related: Bitcoin’s quantum challenges are “social rather than technical”: Grayscale
“This is a huge deal,” StarkWare CEO Eli Ben Sasson said, arguing that this would effectively make Bitcoin today quantum secure.
However, Bitcoin ESG expert Daniel Batten said this was an “overstatement” as public key disclosure and dormant wallets “are not covered in the paper.”
Mr Batten was referring to an estimated 1.7 million people. $BTC It is locked to the initial P2PK address and can be cracked by a quantum computer.
Its existence has sparked a heated debate over what to do with dormant coins, with the community divided between leaving Bitcoin as is to preserve its core ethos, freezing or burning vulnerable coins entirely, or upgrading the protocol to support quantum-secure signatures.
Changing the protocol is the recommended solution
Researchers acknowledge that this is a last resort because transactions are not standard, costs do not apply to all users, and use cases like the Lightning Network are not covered.
They concluded that protocol-level changes remain preferable in the long term.
“This article describes a currently available solution for quantum-secure Bitcoin transactions, but it should be treated as a last resort.”
Google upset the Bitcoin community in March when it published a paper suggesting that quantum computers could crack Bitcoin’s encryption with far fewer resources than previously thought.
Meanwhile, Lightning Labs Chief Technology Officer Olaoluwa Osuntokun on Wednesday unveiled a quantum “escape hatch” prototype that allows users to prove ownership of their Bitcoin wallet from the original seed phrase without revealing it. This could serve as an alternative Bitcoin authentication method.
magazine: No one knows if quantum-secure cryptography will work
