Working BIP 360 Implementation: P2MR Moves to Testing
BTQ Technologies announced the deployment of the first working implementation of Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 360 (BIP 360) on the Bitcoin Quantum testnet v0.3.0. This separate blockchain simulates how Bitcoin could function in a post-quantum world, turning BIP 360 from theory into a live testing environment for developers, miners, and researchers.
BIP 360 introduces Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR), a transaction format that restructures how transaction data is committed on-chain. Traditional Bitcoin transactions require senders to reveal public keys for signature verification, which exposes those keys during broadcast. P2MR leverages a Merkle tree structure to hide public keys in certain spending paths, eliminating the key-path spend mechanism introduced with Taproot that could expose public keys to quantum attacks. The design remains compatible with scripting features underpinning Lightning Network, BitVM, and Ark.
“BIP 360 represents the Bitcoin community's most significant step toward quantum resistance and we've turned it from a proposal into running code,” said Olivier Roussy Newton, CEO of BTQ Technologies, in the company's press release. He emphasized that the implementation preserves key functionality tied to Bitcoin's scaling roadmap while removing vulnerable components.
Beyond the core transaction structure, the testnet includes full wallet tooling for creating, funding, signing, and broadcasting P2MR transactions. BTQ stated that this end-to-end functionality makes the upgrade immediately testable, rather than a purely academic proposal.
Quantum Resistance Experimentation and Adoption Challenges
BTQ's broader goal is to accelerate experimentation around quantum-resistant infrastructure amid growing concerns over future cryptographic risks. The Bitcoin Quantum testnet currently includes over 50 miners and has processed more than 100,000 blocks, according to the release, indicating a stable environment for ongoing research.
However, technical progress highlights a deeper challenge: adoption. BTQ has effectively bypassed Bitcoin's traditional governance process by launching its own test network instead of waiting for consensus within the main ecosystem. This decision reflects longstanding friction around major protocol changes, which historically require broad agreement among developers, miners, and users. Christopher Tam, BTQ's head of innovation, framed the issue as a “social problem” in an interview with Decrypt, pointing to the difficulty of coordinating change across a decentralized network with entrenched stakeholders.
The approach also raises questions about whether a parallel chain can meaningfully influence Bitcoin's future. The Bitcoin Quantum testnet does not share Bitcoin's ledger or balances; it launches from a new genesis block with its own asset and ruleset. Users must actively opt in rather than automatically inherit the upgrade, meaning that even a successful technical proof of concept may not lead to mainnet adoption.
Even with a working implementation, BIP 360 addresses only part of the quantum threat. Tam noted that while the proposal can help secure future transactions under the P2MR format, it does not retroactively protect older addresses whose public keys may already be exposed. Funds in such addresses remain vulnerable unless users move them to protected addresses.
The urgency remains. Researchers widely expect that sufficiently advanced quantum computers could eventually break the elliptic-curve cryptography (ECDSA and Schnorr signatures) that secures Bitcoin, though the timeline is uncertain. For now, BTQ's testnet serves as an early proving ground. Whether its work translates into changes on Bitcoin itself may depend less on code—and more on consensus.