Researchers from several American universities, led by Dr. Ahmet Kurt from East Texas A&M University, have developed the first complete post-quantum security design for Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. This solution layers new quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms on top of Lightning’s existing systems, using ML-DSA digital signatures and ML-KEM key exchange standardized by NIST. The project took approximately three to four months and roughly 11,000 lines of code to complete. The hybrid design requires an attacker to compromise both classical and post-quantum cryptographic systems to forge a payment. This research demonstrates that Lightning’s off-chain systems can prepare for the quantum era independently from solutions being developed for Bitcoin’s mainnet.
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