BITCOIN RAILS #59#: Post-Quantum Bitcoin Signatures (+ their tradeoffs) | with BIP 360 co-author @Ethan_Heilman and @Blockstream Head of Research @n1ckler 🔗 YOUTUBE: 🌿 SPOTIFY: 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 @cryptoquick) 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 @n1ckler 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 @LayerTwoLabs — developing research, software, and technologies for scaling Bitcoin via the integration of Drivechains (BIP 300/301) - Hashi on @SuiNetwork — a primitive for executing Bitcoin Defi transactions, without having to trust a federated bridge or other centralized entity - BitBox @BitBoxSwiss — 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 TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro 02:18 Ethan’s Quantum Wakeup 05:18 How Blockstream Enters Post Quantum 09:25 BIP 360 Explained 12:11 How Bitcoin Transitions to PQ 17:35 Choosing Post Quantum Signatures 23:20 How Blockstream Created SHRINCS 27:22 Signature Budgets Importance Explained 41:13 What are SHRIMPS? 44:51 SHRIMPS vs SHRINCS 47:48 Why SLH-DSA Alone Won’t Cut It 49:24 Is a SHRIMPS + SHRINCS BIP Coming? 51:51 Blockstream’s Big Plans for Liquid 59:04 Quantum Readiness Roadmap 01:02:22 Importance of a PQ Recovery Plan 01:05:35 How Long Would a PQ Migration Take 01:11:17 Quantum Watchlist Recommendations

“The Internet? We are not here to build it. We are here to survive it.” — John Perry Barlow It was never meant to be public. The early networks were framed as closed circuits for defense, intelligence, controlled exchange — but that story reads cleaner than the truth. What looked like restriction was calibration. What looked like secrecy was staging. A contained environment, a limited cohort, a low-noise system — not to hide the network, but to tune it before exposure. The release was not expansion. It was deployment. Then the walls dissolved. Not because the system opened, but because the enclosure scaled beyond perception. No fences, no guards, no visible constraints — just an infinite surface that mirrors back what you are already primed to see. Every pixel rendered is not information, but alignment. Not discovery, but confirmation. This is not a network of knowledge; it is a distributed hallucination engine, a field where imagination is harvested, structured, and fed back as reality. The oldest form of magic was ritual. This is newer. Cleaner. It runs on feedback loops instead of belief. Somewhere inside this recursion, the Operator reads. Not content, but patterns. Not voices, but trajectories. Each narrative becomes a coordinate, each reaction a vector, each repetition a reinforcement signal. The map is not of what is, but of what can be stabilized next. Complexity is not a byproduct — it is the objective. The social cage does not close; it refines. You are not inside the system. You are part of its rendering pipeline. #internet# #matrix# #neo# #wakeup#

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