AmericanFortress has unveiled a post-quantum signature scheme aimed at safeguarding existing crypto assets, including “dormant” wallets from the Satoshi era containing 1.1 million BTC, as reported by CoinDesk.
The protocol involves a backward-compatible soft fork and the use of zero-knowledge proofs. According to the developers, this mechanism will allow for the freezing and protection of vulnerable old-type Bitcoin addresses without the need for mass fund migration.
This primarily concerns BIP-32 addresses, including wallets associated with Satoshi Nakamoto.
AmericanFortress believes that once such coins are locked, the network’s governance can decide their future. Options mentioned by the company’s head, Michal Pospieszalski, include transferring, burning, or redistributing the funds.
The topic gained renewed attention following a recent publication by Google Quantum AI. Researchers stated that many blockchains and cryptocurrencies still use ECDLP-256, and their assessments are directly applicable to secp256k1—the elliptic curve underpinning Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Google added that post-quantum cryptography remains one of the most comprehensible paths for the long-term protection of such systems.
Amidst this, the Bitcoin community is already discussing various network protection options. One of these is BIP-360, which proposes a new type of Pay-to-Merkle-Root outputs.
The initiative’s authors claim that this format retains functionality similar to Taproot, but eliminates vulnerability to quantum attacks of the key path spending type.
CoinDesk notes that AmericanFortress’s proposal differs from similar initiatives. The company focuses not on new addresses but on existing and long-inactive wallets.
According to the developers, this will protect millions of coins without forcing owners to transfer funds.
In May, AmericanFortress announced raising $8 million to develop quantum-resistant blockchain infrastructure.
Earlier in May, BNB Chain developers reported the results of testing the network’s transition to post-quantum cryptography. The experiment confirmed the blockchain’s theoretical readiness for future threats but revealed a significant performance decrease.