Bitcoin’s network has taken a significant step toward safeguarding against future quantum computing threats by incorporating the updated proposal BIP 360 into the official Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) GitHub repository. This development aims to strengthen Bitcoin against emerging cryptographic and quantum computing risks. BIP 360 introduces a new type of Bitcoin output called Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR), which supports quantum-resistant script tree functionality while maintaining compatibility with the existing Tapscript infrastructure. This proposal is considered an initial move toward quantum hardening at the protocol level.
Quantum computing poses theoretical risks to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, as sufficiently advanced quantum machines could derive private keys from public keys, increasing the risk of fund theft. Taproot addresses, Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) outputs, and reused addresses are particularly vulnerable since their public keys are exposed on the blockchain. The P2MR output, which resembles Taproot, addresses a key weakness: Taproot’s key-path spending reveals the public key, whereas P2MR disables this method and relies solely on the script path, thereby reducing potential attack surfaces.
The authors of BIP 360 state that the proposal lays the groundwork for introducing post-quantum signature schemes into Bitcoin in the future, potentially including algorithms such as ML-DSA (Dilithium) and SLH-DSA (SPHINCS+). These changes represent a crucial effort to enhance Bitcoin’s resilience against the growing threats posed by quantum computing. This progress comes amid increasing investments by governments and major technology companies in post-quantum cryptography. The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has emphasized the need for quantum-secure systems by 2030, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) plans to phase out elliptic curve cryptography from federal systems.
Through BIP 360, Bitcoin seeks to align with future quantum-secure security standards, enabling the network to adapt to advancing computational capabilities.
Source: bitcoinmagazine
