A group of developers has proposed a new Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP-361) to help safeguard Quantum-vulnerable coins on its blockchain. The new update, proposed by Cypherpunk Jameson Lopp and five others, calls for a freeze on the 1.7 million potentially exposed tokens to prevent Quantum hackers from stealing their private keys once the technology becomes feasible.
If adopted, the upgrade would essentially freeze all 1 million BTC that Satoshi Nakamoto mined during the network’s first few years. The true identity of Nakamoto remains shrouded in mystery, so we don’t know for sure how they feel about this development.
Nuclear Option to Protect Bitcoin Invoked
The draft of the proposal was posted on GitHub yesterday. It is a kind of nuclear option to help mitigate some of the risks associated with the incoming Quantum frontier, which is likely to hit the earliest Bitcoin the hardest, as they are the most vulnerable because of the use of public addresses.
The BIP-361 upgrade would essentially shield the legacy Bitcoin from the clutches of the Quantum leaps for the time being, before developers can figure out what to do with them. It builds on the previous BIP 360 initiative, which addressed quantum-proofing but left out more than 34% of holdings, including the 1.7 million BTC in question.
The proposal provides the following rationale for the freezing of these digital assets:
 
“An attack on Bitcoin may not be economically motivated – an attacker may be politically or maliciously motivated and may attempt to destroy value and trust in Bitcoin rather than extract value. There is no way to know in advance how, when, or why an attack may occur. A defensive position must be taken well in advance of any attack.”
Two-Step Process to Freeze Quantum-Vulnerable Addresses
The freezing of this crypto will be handled in two phases, as specified in BIP-361. The first update will see these addresses being de-linked from the decentralized ecosystem so that no new BTC can be sent to them, and in the second phase, the addresses, including Satoshi’s, will be frozen to protect the funds remaining in their coffers.
The proposal justifies freezing the tokens using Satoshi’s logic:
“Lost coins only make everyone else’s coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.” – Satoshi Nakamoto
If true, the corollary is:
“Quantum recovered coins only make everyone else’s coins worth less. Think of it as a theft from everyone.”
However, simply freezing these tokens in time is not the endgame of the proposal; a third step will follow, allowing users who miss multiple deadlines to reclaim their tokens using their seed phrases.
Backlash
While the BIP 360 upgrade was met with dogged optimism because of the looming quantum threat, the latest proposal immediately faced backlash from the community.
“This quantum proposal is highly authoritarian and confiscatory, but of course, it’s from Lopp.
There is no good rationale for forcing the upgrade and rendering old spends invalid. Upgrade should be 100% voluntary.”, One X User replied.
It is highly unlikely that there will be consensus on this nuclear option for the legacy BTC addresses, a condition that must be met before the actual upgrade can be made on the blockchain.
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