Thomas on Warpcast

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@aviationdoctor.eth

Genuine question in light of Google's Willow announcement. We knew for years that both Bitcoin and Ethereum would eventually need to move from their current ECDSA to a post-quantum cryptographic algorithm. My understanding is that such a move will require (i) the implementation of a new algorithm in the codebase, obviously, but also (ii) user action to migrate their tokens to the newly-generated, quantum-resistant addresses. If my understanding is correct, does it mean that inactive wallets (deceased owner, lost passphrase, etc.) will inevitably become vulnerable at some point, or will they be prohibited from transacting past a certain date after the switch? If it's the latter, it breaks the promise of permanence of blockchains. If the former, it means that at some point, vast amounts of tokens from dead wallets will be retrieved and will flood the market once again. Chief among them, of course, are Satoshi's own wallets. This race to crack and dump old wallets would be catastrophic to public trust IMO

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For Ethereum, they're in the most danger — reuse of keys is the norm with the account model. For Bitcoin, a public key is not revealed until a transaction moves funds. Satoshi's coins for the most part aren't movable because the public key is unknown. That being said, willow is not a threat, we're still far away from a post quantum world.

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One approach is to freeze all old balances and require a zk proof (e.g. of the key derivation from seed, or something else) to migrate balances to new cryptography. Though not sure what the strategy is for raw byte private keys that weren't derived from a seed (e.g. original ICO purchases).

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Daniel Lombraña

Check this cast https://warpcast.com/tylerfoust.eth/0x80984b2e

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Tempe.degen 🎩

@tempetechie.eth

Ethereum foundation has multiple teams working on post-quantum cryptography (lattice and two others). Also, Vitalik wrote what to do if quantum comes too soon: https://cryptopotato.com/heres-what-vitalik-buterin-proposes-in-case-of-a-quantum-emergency/

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Tokenized Human

@tokenizedhuman

How much of a concern is this currently for crypto?

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Luigi Stranieri

@luigistranieri

I don’t know and hope someone can answer you but the fact that people had to do some kind of action to migrate, in my view means just that the crypto world is still inaccessible to the majority of people.

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thoughtcrimeboss

@thoughtcrimeboss

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