Overview
- Cory Fields, a Bitcoin Core developer, posted the “quantum landmines” proposal to the bitcoin-dev mailing list on Wednesday, November 4, to change attacker economics rather than immediately change cryptography.
- Under Fields’ example, a spender moving coins whose public keys are already visible onchain would have to lock equal-value collateral from a quantum‑safe wallet into a special output before the transfer could complete.
- The design uses commit/reveal and optional auction rules so a legitimate owner who prepared a hidden proof could reclaim coins and seize an attacker’s collateral during a waiting period.
- The idea is purely a thought experiment that would need new consensus rules and standardized quantum‑safe outputs to work, so it is not implemented and the bitcoin-dev community has not yet produced substantive responses.
- Analysts estimate roughly 7.1 million BTC sit in addresses with exposed public keys, which is intensifying debate about whether voluntary migration, soft‑fork protections, or incentive mechanisms like landmines are the best path forward.