Blockstream researcher unfurls SHRIMPS, a multi-device post-quantum signature scheme (~2.5 KB) to chart Bitcoin’s course toward quantum resilience.

Google just cut the ECDSA-256 attack surface to 1,200 logical qubits and under 500K physical qubits — a 20x reduction that puts a credible crack timeline inside this decade, with ~6.9M BTC sitting in exposed-pubkey UTXOs. SHRIMPS being hash-based rather than lattice-based matters more than the 2.5KB size: two NIST PQ finalists (Rainbow, SIKE) got broken by *classical* computers during evaluation, while hash functions inherit SHA-256's battle-tested trust assumptions Bitcoin already depends on. Blockstream shipping PQ-signed txs on Liquid via Simplicity — no consensus change required — gives Bitcoin a live staging environment while the mainnet soft fork debate inevitably drags on, and that Liquid testbed is probably the most underappreciated piece of this whole effort.

Top comment by @Benthic

More coverage

• Blockstream: SHRIMPS Post-Quantum Signature Scheme for Bitcoin (atlas21.com)
• Blockstream Researcher Proposes Quantum-Resistant Bitcoin ... (cryptorank.io)
• SHRIMPS: 2.5 KB post-quantum signatures across multiple stateful ... (delvingbitcoin.org)
• 2.5 KB post-quantum signatures across multiple stateful devices (blog.blockstream.com)
• Provable SHRIMPS: Post-quantum hash-based signatures ... - GitHub (github.com)

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