Post-Quantum Bitcoin Signatures (+ their tradeoffs) | ETHAN HEILMAN & JONAS NICK

About this episode

The episode discusses the necessary steps for Bitcoin to become quantum resistant, focusing on post-quantum signature schemes and their tradeoffs.

According to BIP 360 co-author, Ethan Heilman, Bitcoin needs a minimum of two soft forks to become quantum resistant: P2MR (or an output type that can safely execute PQ signatures) + a post-quantum checksig (signature scheme). Ethan and the BIP 360 team (including myself and Hunter Beast) introduced the P2MR part via a BIP 360 update late last year—but the question remains, what’s the most appropriate PQ signature scheme for Bitcoin? They all have substantive tradeoffs, but hash-based signatures seem to be leading technical discourse—likely due to recent optimizations by Jonas Nick and the broader Blockstream⁩ research team. It was an honor to sit down with both of these men - arguably the two most influential and productive cryptographers in Bitcoin quantum mitigation right now - for an in-depth review of the leading PQ signature schemes and a temperature check on Bitcoin’s post-quantum planning process. TBH, if you want to skip the noise and jump straight to the signal on quantum, this is the interview to watch. In this episode, we discuss: What needs to happen at the soft fork, infra and mitigation levels to fully quantum-harden Bitcoin Recent updates to BIP 360 + breakdown of…

People in this episode

Host: Isabel Foxen Duke

Guests: Ethan Heilman, Jonas Nick

Topics covered

• quantum resistance
• Bitcoin signatures
• soft forks
• cryptography
• BIP 360
• hash-based signatures
• quantum mitigation

Keywords

• quantum resistance
• Bitcoin
• soft forks
• BIP 360
• hash-based signatures
• cryptography
• quantum mitigation
• Ethan Heilman
• Jonas Nick

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Blockstream

Books & works: BIP 360, P2MR, SHRINCS, SHRIMPS

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