Preparing Bitcoin for a 2030s Quantum threat. Serious thoughts on the best solution?
The threat
We use Elliptic Curve signatures to derive public keys from private keys.
This Elliptic Curve Cryptography will almost certainly be broken by Shor's algorithm once sufficient hardware exists. This means that coins in addresses with exposed public keys are vulnerable to Quantum in the future.
This vulnerability applies only to early P2PK addresses (including satoshis) and reused modern addresses.
Most experts in the field expect this to happen in the 2030s. Google thinks there is a chance this could be even sooner and has set internal targets to be quantum-proof by 2029. AI will almost certainly facilitate faster progress in this space. Perhaps it will be later than most of these forecasts, but we should still be prepared.
It is not good enough, imo, to dismiss this threat by saying that banks will be affected as well. Banks can exert their central control to remediate the impacts of an attack. Yes, there are threats elsewhere, but we should be concerned with our own threats.
The solutions
- Voluntary migration to new addresses. Do nothing about lost/inaccessible coins and allow them to be taken and recirculated by quantum computers whenever they materialise.
- Voluntary migration to new addresses up until an established deadline. (set sometime before the quantum threat materializes). After the remaining vulnerable coins are freezed/burned. (Like with the BIP-360 proposal)
- Solution 2, adding in a post-freeze coin recovery scheme. Potentially if they can verify that a human has the keys without brute forcing then allow recovery. (Could be difficult to implement)
I am interested in what solutions people think are best/most feasible and if you have any other solutions not mentioned.
I feel that option 1 follows the core principle of permissionless/decentralised money by not freezing; however, the number of vulnerable coins that are likely lost or won't migrate is likely going to be in the millions. Can we afford to have 10-20% of the supply dumped onto the market at once? Surely the impact on Bitcoin's reputation would be too catastrophic.
Freezing/burning people's coins is far from ideal. However if the vast majority were already lost (judging by the fact they didn't migrate their coins within the timeframe), surely this would be the least bad solution??
[link] [comments]