History and Mission of BIP 360
How we got so far... And have so much more to go.
I first looked into Bitcoin’s quantum resistance with my friend Kyle Crews in April 2024, who I'd met at Denver BitDevs. I invited him to join me in founding a company called Surmount Systems, and we applied to Bitcoin Startup Lab after interviewing with Albert Lang. Our exact business model was uncertain, but our research led us to one inescapable conclusion: quantum computers could pose an existential threat to Bitcoin.
Unable at the time to identify a clear path to commercialization, we pivoted instead to create the Surmount Systems Foundation, with the sole purpose of safeguarding Bitcoin against quantum attacks. Our flagship project was drafting a BIP to introduce a new output type, Pay-to-Quantum-Resistant-Hash (P2QRH). I’m grateful to everyone who donated and supported our efforts.
In December 2024, Jon Atack (rhymes with "attic") graciously assigned our proposal BIP 360 after several rounds of review on the pull request in the bitcoin/bips GitHub repository. Later that month, I accepted an offer to join MARA as a Senior Protocol Engineer - working to support the development of the Anduro sidechain platform, including the implementation of quantum resistant features like P2QRH. With the support of the team, I’ve been able to advance and advocate for post quantum cryptography in Bitcoin, and work towards developing a robust activation client for BIP 360.
I’ve worked closely with the grizzled Bitcoin veteran Mike Casey to help bring Anduro to maturity. We were joined by the singular Isabel Foxen Duke, who’s incredibly talented at marketing and business development. The three of us frequently put our heads together to solve problems around Anduro’s architecture, the federation, and how best to develop and promote BIP 360.
While the team is grateful to be working on Anduro, the true end game in our work is facilitating the opt-in transition to quantum resistant addresses on Bitcoin. If native Bitcoin is affected by quantum attacks, no pegged asset is truly safe either. BIP 360 (and related proposals) remain the priority.
In May 2025, the direction of the project got a new burst of energy when Ethan Heilman, author of BIP 347, agreed to co-author BIP 360. Ethan has made several substantive suggestions to the BIP, which we’re currently integrating and workshopping with leading cryptographers in the space. I’m incredibly grateful to have him on board and look forward to continued work to optimize the cryptography and architecture put forth in our proposal.
We also hired a team of three experienced full time engineers to help accelerate BIP 360 technical objectives. This involves libbitcoinpqc, a future BIP 360 Bitcoin Core soft fork client, and a signet.
But ultimately, our mission is not just technical. We must work closely with Bitcoin developers, miners, node runners and other stakeholders to arrive at consensus. The community must align to solve this problem, and we are under no illusions about the difficulties associated with activating changes through largely undefined governance protocols.
We believe the Bitcoin community will pull through to address this potential threat, but we don’t believe it’s inevitable. While the timeline for action is ultimately unknowable, we know our risk, by definition, accelerates as time passes.
Who knows? Maybe quantum computers are a complete scam and we’re busy protecting imaginary money from an imaginary threat. In some ways I’d welcome that outcome. It’d be easier and offer better job security. But with over $40 billion invested in quantum computing so far, and the U.S. government briefing top officials on post-quantum cryptography, perhaps they know something we don’t. Regardless, improving Bitcoin’s quantum security can’t hurt. Bitcoiners are monetary doomsday preppers, and post-quantum Bitcoiners are about as tin-foil-hat as it gets.
I want to express my sincerest gratitude to everyone who’s supported me on this journey, through podcast interviews, encouragement on X, contributions to the Surmount Systems Foundation and to the BIP (especially reviewers!), and of course to my team at Anduro. I’m also grateful to others working on similar proposals in this space, including QES2, QRAMP, pqcBitcoin, qBTC, Project Eleven, and DASK. I’d also like to acknowledge Ian, Pierre-Luc, Tippie, Chris, Jameson, and many others who’ve chimed in. We’re working hard to build everything needed for a BIP 360 implementation that people can test and, one day, activate, and also to be diligent and build it the right way. We hope to have something ready by the end of the year. Stay tuned for more!