SHRINCS BIP published: Quantum-secure Bitcoin comes with a catch

Blockstream co-founder and CEO Adam Back has a reputation as a quantum computer skeptic who believes the technology is so immature the threat won’t materialize for decades.

Which makes it all the more fascinating that his company is one of the leaders in researching practical solutions to the issue. Back told Cointelegraph earlier this year “the safe thing” is to prepare for the threat well in advance.

Blockstream has already proven its experimental post-quantum signature scheme called SHRINCS works in production on its Liquid sidechain and a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal for SHRINCS was published earlier today.

Blockstream Research’s Jonas Nick called it “the first concrete proposal for a post-quantum signature scheme designed specifically for Bitcoin.” But he added that “SHRINCS is not intended to be Bitcoin’s ‘final’ signature scheme, and it is not optimal along every axis.

”I do think it is a very good trade-off among the options we have now.”

Source: Jonas Nick

While the timeline is hotly debated, scientists agree that sufficiently advanced quantum computers will be able to reverse engineer private keys from public keys, thereby undermining Bitcoin’s security and enabling the theft of billions. That’s why the race is on to develop ways to upgrade Bitcoin to make it safe from attack.