Blockstream Research has published a detailed review of post-quantum lattice signatures for Bitcoin, comparing Dilithium, Falcon and Hawk across on-chain footprint, verification cost, implementation difficulty, deployment risk and long-term usability. The report starts from a practical premise: Bitcoin’s current Schnorr and ECDSA signatures are efficient today, but Shor’s 1994 result means a sufficiently capable quantum computer could break them, so migration planning cannot wait until the threat is immediate. The study argues that Bitcoin should target at least NIST security level 3 because coins can remain unspent for decades, leaving funds exposed if future cryptanalysis weakens lower-margin parameters. On that basis, Dilithium stands out for simple integer-only implementation and broad software support, but its size is a major drawback on-chain. Falcon offers much smaller signatures and the fastest verification, though its signing path is harder to implement safely because of floating-point Gaussian sampling. Blockstream says deterministic, integer-simulated Falcon can address that issue at the cost of slower signing. Hawk, once notable for very small signatures and low memory use, has dropped out after Straznickas and Weis of Anthropic found a structural flaw that sharply reduced its estimated security. Blockstream’s bottom line is that if a lattice-based option had to be chosen today, Falcon-1024 would be the pick. Even so, the report says the conservative short-term path for Bitcoin is still hash-based signatures until the FN-DSA standard is finalized and production-grade implementations and hardware support mature.

A Bitcoin Improvement Proposal for the post-quantum signature scheme SHRINCS has been published, putting a concrete Bitcoin-focused option into the debate over how the network could defend itself against future quantum attacks. The proposal comes from research led by Blockstream, whose team has already tested SHRINCS in production on the Liquid sidechain. Blockstream Research’s Jonas Nick described it as the first concrete post-quantum signature proposal designed specifically for Bitcoin, while also stressing that it is not meant to be Bitcoin’s final signature system and is not optimal in every respect. The core appeal is size. Existing post-quantum schemes endorsed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology are far larger than Bitcoin’s current ECDSA and Schnorr signatures, creating a major throughput problem if deployed directly on-chain. SHRINCS is still much bigger than Schnorr, but materially smaller than many alternatives, and Blockstream’s estimates suggest Bitcoin could still run at roughly 3 transactions per second under SHRINCS, versus 0.5 TPS for ML-DSA and 0.36 TPS for SPHINCS+. The catch is that SHRINCS is still early. Its BIP says the security proof remains unfinished, and the design introduces statefulness, signature growth over time, and a large fallback recovery path if a signing device is lost. Blockstream is also exploring lattice-based signatures and zero-knowledge proof aggregation, which it estimates could lift Bitcoin throughput to 6.7 TPS if combined with SHRINCS.

Monad has released a draft improvement proposal aimed at changing how wallet accounts handle authentication and key management. The proposal would separate account authentication from addresses, allowing users to rotate private keys without changing their address. It also includes native support for post-quantum cryptography standards such as ML-DSA. Under the draft, key configuration would be managed through an AuthConfigManager precompile contract. Any change would require proof of ownership and would only take effect after a delay of three blocks. Monad said older accounts could upgrade without disruption while maintaining backward compatibility. The proposal also adds support for multi-factor authentication and social recovery. Techub cited CryptoBriefing in its report on the draft.

Responsible Fintech Institute and crypto custody infrastructure provider Safeheron have launched a pilot for quantum-resistant digital asset wallets and onchain transfers, with participants drawn from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The pilot runs on a quantum-resistant NEAR testnet and uses a multi-party computation protocol that supports the ML-DSA-65 standard. Participating regulators include Abu Dhabi Global Market, Bhutan’s Gelephu Financial Services Office, and Malta’s Financial Services Authority, while Bison Bank and DK Bank are involved as financial institutions. Under the setup, banks will test wallet creation and transfers in a shared application environment. Regulators will observe in the first phase before taking part in governance workflows later. The organizers said they plan to publish a white paper covering the research, protocol design, and test results, and will gradually open-source the underlying technology. Cointelegraph also noted that the Hong Kong Monetary Authority aims to have Hong Kong’s banking sector fully prepared for quantum security risks by 2030, while a 2025 report from the Bank for International Settlements recommended that financial institutions migrate to post-quantum systems in phases.

Responsible Fintech Institute, or RFI, and crypto custody infrastructure provider Safeheron have launched a pilot focused on post-quantum digital asset wallets and onchain transfers. Participants are drawn from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The pilot runs on a post-quantum NEAR testnet and uses a multi-party computation protocol that supports the ML-DSA-65 standard. Regulatory participants include Abu Dhabi Global Market, Bhutan’s Gelephu Financial Services Office, and Malta’s Financial Services Authority. Bison Bank and DK Bank are taking part as financial institutions. In the first phase, banks will test wallet creation and transfers in a shared application environment, while regulators will observe before joining governance workflows at a later stage. The organizers also plan to publish a white paper covering the research, protocol design, and testing results, and to gradually open-source the underlying technology. The update comes as the Hong Kong Monetary Authority aims to have Hong Kong’s banking sector fully prepared for quantum security risks by 2030, while a 2025 report from the Bank for International Settlements recommends that financial institutions migrate to post-quantum systems in phases.

Banks and financial regulators from Europe, the Middle East and Asia have joined a pilot program testing quantum-resistant infrastructure for digital asset wallets and onchain transfers. The initiative was announced Monday by the Responsible Fintech Institute and crypto custody infrastructure provider Safeheron. It uses a multiparty computation protocol that supports ML-DSA-65, a post-quantum digital signature standard published by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, and runs on a quantum-resistant NEAR testnet. Participating regulators include Abu Dhabi Global Market, Bhutan’s Gelephu Financial Services Office and the Malta Financial Services Authority. Bison Bank and DK Bank are taking part as financial institutions and will test wallet generation and transfers in a shared application environment. Regulators will observe the first phase before contributing to a governance workstream later, with each institution taking part at a different level. Organizers also plan to publish a white paper on the research, protocol design and test findings, and later open-source the underlying technology. The pilot arrives as financial authorities step up preparations for the security risks that quantum computing may pose to public-key cryptography.

ChainFeeds published its Aug. 14 research roundup, pulling together five feature pieces selected from its Aug. 13 Web3 briefing. The package spans Bitcoin market structure, crypto venture and trading narratives, wallet design for AI agents, Ethereum’s long-term cryptography roadmap, and startup advice from Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan. The Bitcoin section, citing Glassnode, says BTC remains stuck between two key on-chain cost bases: the Median Realized Price near $63,000 and the Short-Term Holder Cost Basis near $68,700. Spot activity has fallen to one of the lowest levels in years, ETF demand has yet to show a convincing return, and leveraged longs in derivatives have built up ahead of a broader recovery. The report says a downside break would put focus on the June low around $58,500. Other pieces in the roundup argue that stablecoins and perpetuals remain crypto’s clearest native product-market fits, examine how products such as x402 and MetaMask Agent Wallet try to give AI agents controlled spending and execution power, and frame recursive STARK aggregation as a key tool for Ethereum’s post-quantum, privacy, and scaling agenda. The final feature highlights Garry Tan’s warning that chasing hot sectors can pull founders away from areas where they have genuine edge, while AI-driven coding is changing what counts as a durable moat.

A busy news cycle from Aug. 6 to Aug. 7 brought a mix of crypto regulation, market structure, corporate disclosures, and AI-linked developments. Dow Protocol said claims that OKX Ventures had invested in the project were false and said a list of investors would be released this week without OKX Ventures on it. The U.S. Senate, meanwhile, decided to delay a vote on the Clarity Act until September, extending uncertainty around a major federal crypto bill. Outside Washington, Thailand confirmed a five-year capital gains tax exemption on crypto trades executed through Thai SEC-licensed venues from Jan. 1, 2025 through Dec. 31, 2029. MetaMask introduced a self-custodial AI wallet that lets agents execute on-chain transactions within user-defined limits, and Wintermute registered a broker-dealer subsidiary with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and FINRA. The update set also included Binance Alpha’s AGT and AIA blind box airdrop, Cipher Digital’s sale of 1,619 BTC at a realized loss, a Chainalysis report on more than $30 million in violent robbery losses targeting crypto holders in the first half of 2026, Bernstein’s renewed $140 target on Circle, and several funding, hardware, and security stories tied to the broader AI sector.