Blockstream report evaluates lattice-based signatures Dilithium, Falcon, and Hawk for Bitcoin adoption

Blockstream Research evaluated Dilithium, Falcon, and Hawk for Bitcoin post-quantum migration, recommending at least NIST Category 3 security. Dilithium offers easy integer-only implementation and near-practical BIP 32 derivation but is largest: 5,261 bytes combined at Category 3. Falcon-1024 (3,073 bytes) is compact with fast verification; its floating-point sampling requires a deterministic mode slowing signing ~15×. Hawk was withdrawn after an attack cutting key-recovery cost, validating caution. Remaining obstacles include no workable Falcon key derivation (an attempt inflates signatures to ~23.7 kB) and the unfinished Falcon NIST standard.

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