The Case For Lattice-Based Signatures in Bitcoin | CHARLES GUILLEMET
Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen DukeShow Notes
To date, post-quantum Bitcoin discussions have largely centered on which digital signature schemes offer the strongest cryptographic security against a quantum adversary.
But cryptographic assumptions are only one dimension of security.
Different signature schemes introduce different implementation and operational risks. How should Bitcoin weigh cryptographic conservatism against the complexity required to deploy that cryptography safely?
While hash-based signatures are often favored for their conservative assumptions, CTO of Ledger, Charles Guillemet argues that evaluating primitives in isolation can obscure consequential risks at the systems level.
Stateful hash-based schemes, in particular, introduce state-management requirements where operational or user error can have catastrophic consequences —despite their conservative cryptographic foundations.
In this interview, Charles and I examine the tradeoffs of hash-based signatures and his case for greater consideration of lattice-based alternatives, i.e. ML-DSA.
A very juicy episode for anyone seriously assessing Bitcoin's post-quantum design landscape.
This episode of Bitcoin Rails is brought to you by:
LayerTwo Labs — developing research, software, and technologies for scaling Bitcoin via the integration of Drivechains (BIP 300/301)
Hashi on Sui Network — a primitive for executing Bitcoin DeFi transactions, without having to trust a federated bridge or other centralized entity
BitBox — an open-source Bitcoin-only hardware wallet, with smooth UX and no compromises on security. Check out Bitbox [dot] swiss and use code BITCOINRAILS to get a discount
More from Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke
There are few people as close to the frontlines of Bitcoin privacy as Cake Wallet COO Seth for Privacy. After cutting his teeth building for Monero, Seth turned his focus to Bitcoin in 2022, with the view that making Bitcoin more private would ultimately help more people than focusing on a smaller niche target group alone.
Isabel Foxen Duke sits down with [[alloc] init] co-founder Misha Komarov and Head of Protocol Research Clara Shikhelman to examine PIPEs, a cryptographic framework that utilizes witness encryption—a primitive long dismissed as purely theoretical—to unlock advanced Bitcoin programming without a soft fork.
The first fully specified post-quantum signature scheme for Bitcoin has been proposed to the Bitcoin mailing list.
Paul Sztorc founder and CEO of LayerTwo Labs and author of Bitcoin Improvement Proposals 300 and 301 (Drivechains), has been one of Bitcoin's most persistent—and controversial—thinkers, advocating for merge-mined sidechains as a way to dramatically expand Bitcoin's functionality while preserving the security of the base layer.
I first came across River during the 2020 bull market. At the time, it felt like one of the quieter players in the space—not as visible as Coinbase or Kraken, and less talked about than its Bitcoin-only competitor, Swan, which was dominating Bitcoin Twitter and investing heavily in KOL marketing at the time.