Building a Post Quantum Payment Network

Building a Post Quantum Bitcoin How do we make a new digital payment network secure against quantum computers? We’ll explore existing approaches to post-quantum signatures, zero-knowledge proofs, key migration, and the trade-offs they introduce for scalability and usability. We’ll then look at ⁠Quantus as a case study in building a blockchain around post-quantum cryptography from the ground up, including ML-DSA signatures and post-quantum ZK proofs. (⁠Quantus). A key technical challenge is the size of post-quantum signatures. Quantus addresses this through Wormhole Addresses, which use recursive Plonky2/STARK-based zero-knowledge proofs to aggregate transactions and verify them efficiently on-chain. This architecture also provides private transactions without relying on quantum-vulnerable elliptic-curve pairings. Paper / source: [DESCRIPTION COMING SOON] Format Short introduction and context setting to start. A short walkthrough of the paper and its key ideas. Questions and discussion grounded in the original source. Moderator-led discussion with no promotions. Thank you Quantus for hosting us: Quantus is a Proof-of-Work blockchain designed from the ground up for post-quantum security. Built on Substrate, it replaces elliptic-curve signatures with NIST-standardized ML-DSA, uses ML-KEM for quantum-resistant P2P encryption, and Poseidon2 as its ZK-friendly PoW hash function. Session Guides: Chris Smith is the founder and CEO of Quantus, a Layer 1 blockchain secured with NIST-approved post-quantum cryptography. An early contributor to BitcoinJ, he founded BitMesh, the first commercial implementation of micropayment channels on Bitcoin, before Lightning. He built TensorSpark, the first distributed training model on TensorFlow, and was technical co-founder of Lunyr, one of the first ICOs. About Whitepaper Reading Club We are a community of founders, researchers, and builders across Singapore, Malaysia, San Francisco, Bangkok, New York, Lagos, Taipei, and Hong Kong. We meet in person every month to read, discuss, and pressure-test the latest blockchain papers, protocols, and technical ideas. Learn more: Website · Summaries · Calendar We create detailed, easy-to-understand summaries for each paper and have held 80+ sessions since June 2023, covering Account Abstraction, Parallel Chains, EIPs, the Bitcoin ecosystem, and AI x Crypto. We are ecosystem-agnostic, not for profit, and focused on projects with technical, product, or social innovation.