Could Miners Block Bitcoin’s Quantum Defense?

BIP 360 has officially been registered in the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal repository, marking a step towards the creation of an architecture resistant to future quantum attacks.

The document introduces a new Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR) output format, which eliminates the Taproot vulnerability relating to public key disclosure when spending funds. This paves the way for post-quantum signatures to be introduced in future soft forks.

The update has not yet been activated by the developers.

The adoption of BIP 360 could follow a similar path to that of SegWit. At that time, disputes over increasing block capacity led to the first fork and a 50% loss in Bitcoin's market capitalisation.

The future of Bitcoin is determined more by node owners and miner pools than by developers.