Project Eleven launches a Bitcoin Q-Day recovery plan to address the wallet ownership proof challenge under quantum computing threats

July 16 news: Security company Project Eleven released a post-quantum cryptography cryptographic proof scheme on Thursday, aiming to solve the Bitcoin wallet ownership proof problem under quantum computing threats.

Project Eleven CEO Alex Pruden said the core of the cryptographic proof scheme is not about protecting wallets from quantum attacks, but about proving wallet ownership once quantum computers can forge signatures.

Bitcoin currently uses elliptic curve cryptography to secure transactions, but once quantum computers become powerful enough, they can break this cryptographic protection. And "Q-Day" typically refers to the day when quantum computers can break the existing cryptographic systems.

When the "Q-Day" comes—where quantum computers can derive a private key from a public key—the original digital signature verification becomes invalid. This also means that both attackers and wallet owners can generate the same signature, making it impossible to distinguish who is the real owner.

Project Eleven’s technology is based on a wallet key derivation path, enabling users to use this technology to prove to the outside world that they hold the "parent key" used to generate the wallet’s private key, while not exposing the parent key itself.

Although quantum computers can break private keys, they cannot reconstruct the original parent key. Therefore, this technology can still accurately distinguish real wallet owners from attackers even if the private keys are compromised.

The proposal was developed in collaboration between Project Eleven and Jim Posen, a maintainer of the Binius zero-knowledge proof system, and is built on the "signature boosting" technique first proposed by researchers Alon Sattath and Robert Wyborski.

In summary, the mechanism is mainly aimed at users who have not yet migrated to quantum-safe addresses, offering them a ready-to-use solution to address quantum computing threats. However, the current prototype has not yet been audited, and blockchain protocol support is needed before it can be formally put into use.

#BitcoinQuantumThreat