Project Eleven proposes a Bitcoin Q-Day recovery plan to help users prove wallet ownership after quantum attacks

PANews July 17 news, according to Decrypt, the security company Project Eleven proposed a post-quantum cryptography proof scheme aimed at helping Bitcoin users prove wallet ownership after a quantum computer can break private keys (i.e., Q-Day). Project Eleven CEO Alex Pruden said the core challenge is not protecting wallets from quantum attacks, but how to prove ownership after the attack occurs—once a quantum computer can derive private keys from public keys, valid digital signatures no longer prove ownership, and both attackers and legitimate holders can generate the same signature.

The technology uses a wallet’s key-derivation path to allow users to prove they own the parent key that generated the wallet’s private key without disclosing the private key. Because quantum computers cannot reconstruct the parent key, even after the wallet private key is cracked, legitimate holders can still be distinguished from attackers. The scheme was developed in collaboration with Binius, the maintainer of the open-source zero-knowledge proof system, Jim Posen, and is based on the “signature uplifting” technology proposed by researchers Alon Sattath and Robert Wyborski. Q-Day usually refers to the day when quantum computers are sufficient to break the current cryptographic system.