Researchers Build First Working Post-Quantum Defense for Bitcoin’s Lightning Network

Bitcoin Magazine

Researchers Build First Working Post-Quantum Defense for Bitcoin’s Lightning Network

Whether or not quantum computers will break Bitcoin one day is a hot topic. 

But what about second-layer solutions like Lightning? 

Well, researchers from East Texas A&M University, North American University, Florida Gulf Coast University, and Florida Institute of Technology have been working on that. 

In an announcement Tuesday, the team of researchers said that they built what they describe as the first full post-quantum security design for the Lightning Network.

As first uncovered in a research paper in September, the team said they added post-quantum cryptography to Lightning’s communications, payment requests and related systems, implemented in Rust-Lightning. 

It works like this: The solution layers new quantum-resistant cryptography on top of Lightning’s existing cryptography rather than replacing it. It uses ML-DSA digital signatures and ML-KEM key exchange, post-quantum algorithms standardized by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, alongside the classical methods Lightning already relies on. 

In this hybrid design, an attacker would have to break both the new and the old cryptography to compromise a connection or forge a payment request.