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BIP360: Can it protect Bitcoin from quantum computing?

The BIP360 proposal, known as Hourglass, seeks to protect Bitcoin from quantum computing by introducing quantum-resistant addresses and post-quantum cryptography.

On the social network X (formerly Twitter), it was published that the BIP360 proposal, known as Hourglass, was presented to the Bitcoin network developer community, which essentially aims to “mitigate the massive liquidation of P2PK funds in the event of a quantum attack.” The presenter of the proposal was Hunter Beast, author of BIP360 and Senior Protocol Engineer at Anduro, with whom Cointelegraph in Spanish had a conversation.

To provide context, BIP360 is a technical proposal aimed at strengthening the future security of Bitcoin against the threat of quantum computing. Specifically, it seeks to make the way public keys are exposed on the network more secure, a critical part of Bitcoin's cryptographic infrastructure.

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Today, most Bitcoin transactions publicly reveal the user’s public key once the UTXO (unspent transaction output) is spent, making them vulnerable if quantum computers become powerful enough to break ECDSA cryptography.

BIP360 proposes to avoid this unnecessary exposure of public keys. In other words, it attempts to minimize the future “attack surface” without altering the current operation of Bitcoin. Hunter Beast said: “BIP-360 is an improvement proposal that seeks to prepare and protect Bitcoin against possible future attacks with quantum computers. It introduces a new type of address called Pay to Quantum Resistant Hash (P2QRH), which incorporates post-quantum cryptography designed to withstand this type of threat.”