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Adam Back Proposes Bitcoin's Quantum Resistance Upgrade Should be Optional, Not Mandatory
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2026-04-16 11:13

BlockBeats News, April 16th. According to Decrypt, Blockstream CEO Adam Back advocated during Paris Blockchain Week on Wednesday for introducing quantum resistance to Bitcoin in an opt-in upgrade approach, diverging from the previously proposed mandatory freeze solution. Adam Back stated: "Being prepared in advance is crucial to drive changes in a controlled manner, rather than hastily responding to security issues in a crisis." He also emphasized that Bitcoin already has emergency coordination capabilities: "Vulnerabilities have been identified and fixed within hours in the past. Once things become urgent, attention will be focused, and consensus will be formed."

Adam Back's stance contrasts with BIP-361. The proposal, co-drafted by Jameson Lopp and five other developers, was updated on April 15th in the Bitcoin official codebase under the theme of "Post-Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Deprecation." It plans to gradually phase out quantum-vulnerable addresses within five years through a soft fork, ultimately freezing assets that have not completed the migration, including the bitcoins held by Satoshi Nakamoto.

The progress in quantum computing has accelerated this debate. Google Quantum AI released a study last month stating that a quantum computer may be able to break elliptic curve encryption with less than 1200 logical qubits. Their superconducting qubit system would require fewer than 500,000 physical qubits to break Bitcoin's encryption mechanism in minutes, a reduction of about 20 times from previous estimates. Researchers estimate that about 6.9 million BTC are at risk of quantum attacks, including around 1.7 million coins from the Satoshi era mining rewards. Additionally, on the same day, BitMEX Research proposed another mitigation solution, suggesting the establishment of a "canary fund" composed of quantum-vulnerable addresses, triggering a full freeze only when a transfer occurs from addresses in that fund.

Source: BlockBeats

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