Bitcoin-Entwickler schlagen BIP-361 zum Schutz vor Quantencomputing vor

From the article (for those who only read titles):

> *“BIP-361 will freeze approximately 34% of the BTC supply if implemented on the network.“*

The 34% of BTC being referenced here are those stored in potentially vulnerable addresses.

These users would have to move their coins to new types of address that are secured with quantum resistant signiatures.

The type of signiature hasn’t yet been decided, but there are 3 possibilities being considered (FALCON512, Dilithium2 or Dilithium5). The problem with all of these however is that they are much bigger than the currently used ECDSA one… between 9.7x and 64x bigger.

This means that each bitcoin block can fit a lot less transactions, which increases costs for the user and reduces TPS.

The disadvantage with increasing transaction cost is obvious, but the reduced TPS is much more important. Bitcoin already has a very slow throughput, and if all of the vulnerable coins need to be moved then this would take around 2 years, assuming that they used 25% of the network’s capacity.

Obviously if every other Bitcoin user agreed to stop using the chain then this migration could be done in a few months… but that seems unlikely.

So in summary the plan being laid out involves:

* setting a 5 year countdown for migration of 34% of all BTC to new addresses with a signature standard that hasn’t yet been decided;

* if you don’t move in time then your coins will be locked forever (with the vague hope of using ZK to maybe prove ownership in the future);

* moving all the BTC that needs to be migrated will take around 2 years to process all the required transactions;

* and after migration transactions will be 9x to 60x more expensive, with the chain able to process an order of magnitude less TPS.

Sounds great, nothing to worry about!

I was really hoping for the greatest treasure hunt in history. Sad.