We’re proud to share that Isabel Foxen Duke, who leads Bitcoin Growth at StarkWare, is a co-author of a new Bitcoin Improvement Proposal, BIP 360, now officially merged into the Bitcoin BIP GitHub repository.
BIP 360 is a soft fork proposal that introduces Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR), a new Bitcoin output type designed to enable quantum-resistant script tree functionality, including continued compatibility with Tapscript.
In recent months,critics have argued that Bitcoin developers are not taking the quantum threat seriously enough, or that protocol discussions can feel disconnected from the concerns of everyday Bitcoin users. Isabel was brought on as a co-author in part to help ensure that the proposal is understood beyond the developer community and to ensure the messaging is accessible to the general public.
The authors of BIP 360 are making it clear that Bitcoin’s technical community is actively listening, engaged, and working now on credible paths toward quantum readiness.
How Bitcoin is Vulnerable to Quantum Computing
While all Bitcoin addresses are quantum-insecure at the moment of spending, certain output types are especially vulnerable:
- Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) addresses, including coins from the Satoshi era
- Taproot addresses, which underpin much of today’s Bitcoin scaling and Layer 2 innovations
These address-types are particularly at risk because they reveal users’ public keys within their address formats. It is widely theorized that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could eventually derive private keys from exposed public keys, potentially leading to catastrophic loss of funds.
What BIP 360 Proposes
P2MR, on the other hand, are conceptually similar to Taproot, but disable its quantum-vulnerable key-path spend, while laying the groundwork for integrating post-quantum signature schemes in the future. At the same time, P2MR preserves what makes Taproot powerful: the ability to spend to complex scripts in a private way.
“Bitcoin’s longevity depends on confronting hard problems before they become emergencies,” said Isabel Foxen Duke. “We propose the introduction of P2MR as the first step of a more comprehensive migration path to quantum-harden Bitcoin.”
StarkWare’s Commitment to Post-Quantum Readiness
This achievement aligns directly with StarkWare’s long-standing commitment to post-quantum cryptography. ZK-STARK proofs are built on hash-based primitives that are quantum-resistant, and StarkWare views Bitcoin’s transition towards post-quantum safety as one of the most important challenges in the ecosystem today.
StarkWare recently welcomed Prof. Scott Aaronson, one of the world’s leading theoretical computer scientists and quantum computing experts, to StarkWare’s Scientific Advisory Board to advise its work on this frontier.
BIP 360 reflects our belief that it’s possible to preserve Bitcoin’s core value propositions of censorship resistance, security, and long-term durability, while still finding creative, technically sound solutions to emerging threats.
Click here to learn more about how StarkWare’s tech is quantum-resistant.
To learn more about BIP 360, visit Bip360.org or review the BIP on GitHub.
