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Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: Future Proof Bitcoin Storage: A Taproot Vault with Multi-Era Spending Paths...
by
gracreavix
on 27/06/2025, 09:38:42 UTC
Just a couple of days ago I mentioned a similar concept in another thread, which is much simpler but would cater to a slightly different use case: a cold wallet which you should be able to "forget about", even if quantum computing becomes a thing, but it should be possible to be accessed at any time.

With your idea it shares the concept to use a hashlock, but in this case as an additional requirement to the ECDSA key. This means to spend the coins you must know both the private key and the secret.

However, there's a flaw in this concept, and this flaw would (if I understand your setup corrently) also affect your solution: It doesn't at all protect against the "short-exposure" quantum computing attack, because the secret (the preimage) will be revealed at spending time. This means the QC attacker can still replace and double-spend the transaction if it's in the mempool. And against the "long-exposure" quantum computing attack, simply never spending from cold wallet addresses is enough.

This means, the hashlock does not lead to additional security, but instead to a potential vulnerability. I get that you mean that as an "emergency backup" and is meant for lost keys and not necessarily as a post-quantum mechanism, but you have to take this potential risk into account.

I see what you mean. Yeah, I did not think about that fully. The backup part with the paper and hash was not really for quantum safety, more like a last option if everything else is lost. But you are right, if someone uses it when quantum stuff is real, it could be risky.

I will keep that in mind. Still just testing ideas and learning as I go. Thank you for pointing that out.