Bitcoin quantum attacks: Researchers propose wallet protection method
AmericanFortress researchers say ZKPoSP could protect existing crypto wallet addresses from future quantum computers without moving funds.
By Dev Ramirez · Crypto Correspondent
· 3 min read
Researchers at AmericanFortress say they have designed a way to protect Bitcoin from future quantum attacks while keeping current wallet addresses intact. For everyday crypto holders, the pitch is straightforward: reduce the risk that a powerful quantum computer could break today’s wallet signatures without forcing users to move coins to new addresses.
The Wyoming-based blockchain security and cryptography company described the proposal in a paper titled “ZKPoSP: Post-Quantum Zero-Knowledge Proofs for Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets.” The researchers call the system ZKPoSP, short for Zero-Knowledge Proof of Seed Provenance.
The core idea is to replace elliptic curve signatures, the cryptographic signatures used by Bitcoin and many other blockchains today, with zero-knowledge proofs. A zero-knowledge proof lets someone prove a statement is true without revealing the private information behind it. In this case, the wallet owner would prove control of the wallet’s seed phrase without exposing the seed itself.
How would ZKPoSP protect Bitcoin from quantum attacks?
AmericanFortress researchers say ZKPoSP would verify that a user’s wallet keys came from the correct seed phrase, even if a quantum computer could compromise individual private keys. The proposal is aimed at hierarchical deterministic wallets, the common wallet structure where one seed phrase can generate many addresses and keys.
That matters because the paper focuses on what crypto researchers call “Q-Day”: the point when a fault-tolerant quantum computer could run Shor’s algorithm well enough to derive private keys from public keys. According to the AmericanFortress paper, that would undermine the elliptic curve cryptography used across current wallet systems.
The researchers specifically cite wallet standards including BIP32, BIP44 and SLIP-10, which are widely used for key derivation and wallet management. Their proposed framework also includes QBIP32, a key derivation scheme built to support multiple elliptic curves while staying compatible with existing hierarchical deterministic wallets.
Why Bitcoin wallets are exposed after spending
Bitcoin creates a special challenge because a public key becomes visible on-chain when coins are spent. The AmericanFortress paper says a sufficiently advanced quantum computer could use that public key to calculate the matching private key and then forge transaction signatures.
The proposed ZKPoSP approach would not require users to migrate funds to new quantum-safe addresses, according to the researchers. Instead, it would change how ownership is proven: the user would generate a zero-knowledge proof tied to the seed phrase, while the seed remains private.
AmericanFortress said its researchers built a prototype in Rust using the RISC Zero zero-knowledge virtual machine. In prototype benchmarks described in the paper, generating a proof took roughly 12 to 13 seconds, while verification took about 9 to 10 milliseconds. The paper also describes a post-Q-Day mode that lowers proving time for some operations.
The proposal remains research, not a live Bitcoin upgrade. The system has not been adopted by any blockchain network, and deployment would require support from developers, wallet makers, exchanges, miners and users.
Interest in post-quantum cryptography has grown as blockchain teams consider how to handle a future where today’s cryptographic assumptions no longer hold. AmericanFortress presents ZKPoSP as one path for preserving existing wallet infrastructure while changing the proof of ownership underneath it.
This story draws on original reporting from Decrypt.
