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

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 the leading hash-based signatures schemes for Bitcoin (SHRINCS + SHRIMPS) Why we may actually get consensus around a stateful scheme for Bitcoin Comparisons of hash-based signatures vs Lattice and Isogeny-based schemes Assessing the risks of both waiting too long, and acting too fast (and why quantum is a better threat to be facing than a potential classical attack) This episode of Bitcoin Rails is brought to you by my NEW sponsors: LayerTwo Labs — developing research, software and technologies for scaling Bitcoin via the integration of Drivechains (BIP 300/301) Hashi on Sui Network — a primitive for executing Bitcoin Defi transactions, with having to trust a federated bridge or other centralized entity BitBox — an open-source Bitcoin-only hardware wallet, with smooth UX and no compromises on security. Check out Bitbox [dot] swiss and use code BITCOINRAILS to get a discount.