Nothing's free in the world. Adding quantum resistance to Bitcoin is wildly costly and figuring out if and when we need it is expensive, too. We can only hope QC gets discovered gradually.
Zsubmariner's avatar Zsubmariner
PSA: The quantum apocalypse isn't coming A cryptographically-relevant quantum computer is physically impossible: real hardware hits a fundamental back-reaction limit at a few hundred high-fidelity logical qubits due to size-dependent noise from the error-correction process itself. Shor on 256-bit ECDSA requires thousands to tens of thousands of near-perfect ones. The gap is physical and insurmountable. The actual use-cases for “quantum computers” are: - Gassing up investors with science jargon - Building a regulatory moat - Scaring people away from battle-tested open-source cryptography Implementing quantum resistance would be very bad for Bitcoin: - Dilithium2 / Dilithium3 in P2TR - Falcon-512 / Falcon-1024 in P2TR - SPHINCS+-128f in P2TR - ECDSA + Dilithium2 hybrid (legacy/SegWit/Taproot) - ECDSA + Falcon-512 hybrid (legacy/SegWit/Taproot) - New lattice or hash-based spend paths - New QR address formats / commitments - Signature size 9–240× larger - Pubkey size 27–40× larger - Typical spend 15–50× higher fees forever - Witness data 15–50× bigger - UTXO set 10–20× larger within years - Validation time 5–20× slower - Far more complex code, not battle tested - Permanently higher fees (15–50× per tx) - Lightning channel closes 15–50× more expensive - Pruning nodes die (UTXO bloat kills them) - Full-node storage +10–20× in a few years - Increased centralization pressure - Permanent consensus & DoS risk increase - New critical bugs and side-channels Some of the work people are doing to show that we COULD add QR, IF we needed to, is probably helpful to fight the FUD. But don't buy the hype and don't get bullied by the quantum mafia hype machine. #Bitcoin View quoted note →
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Replies (5)

To do a full post-QC’ing, yes, but that doesn’t mean we cannot start. While we cannot today decide whether a future Bitcoin community will fork to freeze non-QC-safe coins, it seems likely they will (a Bitcoin with a few million extra coins is almost certainly value-ruining). Given this, we can start to move now - adding a hash-based signature opcode to tap script allows wallets to, today, transparently and for free, ensure their coins remain spendable in the face of such a future.
waxwing's avatar
waxwing 0 months ago
Fair. Starting is entirely sensible. But I would rather say 'planning' and researching, than starting.
waxwing's avatar
waxwing 0 months ago
Also: I feel that existing deployments on other systems are a bit different, where the stakes are not as high. Also: 'extra coins'? You're talking about stealing, not extra coins, right? (Academic? Maybe, but if we had done confidential transactions, would be v. different!)
Yea, sorry, stolen coins, most of which were probably lost. I agree research is good, but it does seem like “hash-based sigs in tapscript” is the one thing that we can do that isn’t dependent on some future post-quantum cryptography breakthrough. There’s some parameter tuning to do in picking such a sig format, but nothing wild.