Bitcoin Q-Day Recovery Proposal Aims to Allow Users to Reveal Their Identity After a Quantum Attack

When the worries are over Bitcoin is quantum security continues to grow, security company Project Eleven on Thursday unveiled a preview art is designed to solve a major problem by allowing users to verify ownership of a wallet after computers can access private keys and create valid digital signatures.

In a thread on X Wednesday, CEO of Project Eleven, Alex Pruden, said that the main problem is not protecting the bags from suspecting the number of bullets – it shows that they are the owners when possible.

“How do you prove you still have the wallet after the quantum computer generates its signature?” Pruden wrote. “After Q-Day, when a quantum computer can derive the ECC private key from its public key, the valid signature no longer proves its ownership. Both quantum adversaries and the valid owner can create identical signatures.”

“Q-Day” means minutes when a quantum computer can break the elliptic curve cryptography that protects Bitcoin’s transactions. A concern in the market is that an attacker could use a supercomputer to derive the private key from the public key, making digital signatures unreliable as proof of wallet ownership.

What this means in practice is that an attacker can target vulnerable wallets, create their digital signature and move Bitcoin without the owner’s permission.

Project Eleven’s method uses a wallet access method, allowing users to verify that they control the parent key used to generate the wallet’s private key without revealing it.

Because a virtual computer can’t recreate the parent’s key, the company says it can distinguish the legitimate owner from an attacker even if the wallet’s private key is compromised.

“So even after Q-Day, an attacker who has broken the secret key of your address does not capture, and cannot calculate, the seed word from which it came. Proving that you know the parent key, without revealing it, is the only thing that the owner can do,” wrote Pruden.

According to Pruden, the project was developed in collaboration with Jim Posen, manager of the open source Binius zero-knowledge, and builds on a method known as “signature enhancement,” which was first proposed by researchers Alon Sattath and Robert Wyborski. Project Eleven funded Posen to implement the method using Binius, an open source algorithm designed to speed up hash-heavy cryptographic operations.

The proposed recovery method is designed for users who miss future migrations to secure addresses and comes as an effort to prepare Bitcoin to accelerate the quantum future.

In February, Bitcoin developers went further BIP-360the idea of ​​Bitcoin change, in the review process, laying the foundation for a quantum-resistant upgrade. In March, BTQ Technologies release the first project to install on the Bitcoin Quantum testnet, allowing developers to test the application while showing the problem of building cooperation for upgrading the entire network.

In June, Coinbase’s quantum advisory council he encouraged Blockchain developers to start preparing for quantum migration, warning that around 7 million Bitcoins could be vulnerable to quantum attacks if owners fail to move money to secure addresses. Later that month, President Donald Trump signed it the main rules accelerating the federal government’s transition to post-quantum cryptography, and increasing attention to the overall effort to prepare for Q-Day.

“As much as I would like the world to think seriously about mass migration, the reality is that some digital wallets will miss the window,” Pruden wrote. “This puts them back: prove your ownership through adoption, not signature, even if the window is closed.”