Jonas Nick

Blockstream Research is a leading research lab in the Bitcoin ecosystem, working on cryptographic protocols and security. A quantum computer could forge the signatures that authorize Bitcoin and Liquid transactions and use them to steal coins. Liquid, Blockstream's Bitcoin sidechain, is exposed in more ways: an attacker with a quantum computer could also inflate confidential assets, strip their privacy, forge the federation's block signatures to take over consensus, or go after the Bitcoin peg. We walk through each threat, show what we have already built (including the first post-quantum transactions on a production Bitcoin sidechain, run on Liquid), and say plainly what is still open and why we think those problems can be solved.