New Bitcoin Wallet Offers Post-Quantum Protection Without a Fork

Postquant Labs announced Quip Network on Tuesday, a bitcoin wallet that adds quantum-resistant signatures using a Layer 2 approach, offering what the company says is immediate protection against the quantum computing threat without requiring any change to Bitcoin’s core protocol. The product announced in the middle of an intensifying debate over how Bitcoin should prepare for “Q-Day,” the point at which a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could break the elliptic curve cryptography protecting wallet ownership.

Quip is built on Arch Network, a Bitcoin-native smart contract execution platform that allows developers to create contracts that interact directly with Bitcoin’s mainnet without bridges or wrapped assets. The wallet uses WOTS+ (Winternitz One-Time Signature), a tested post-quantum cryptographic primitive. Unlike Bitcoin’s existing signature scheme, WOTS+ does not rely on elliptic curve math, which Shor’s algorithm running on a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could eventually break. A third-party audit is currently underway, though the code was released early to invite community scrutiny.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

Quip’s unveiling comes as Bitcoin developers remain deeply divided over the path forward. BIP-361, backed by Jameson Lopp and a group of Bitcoin developers, proposes phasing out quantum-vulnerable addresses on a fixed five-year timeline, with coins that fail to migrate automatically frozen, including an estimated 5.6 million long-dormant coins and roughly 1 million BTC widely believed to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto. Critics have called the proposal “authoritarian and confiscatory,” arguing it violates Bitcoin’s founding promise of permissionless ownership. A separate approach from Paul Sztorc proposes a more radical eCash hard fork restructuring the chain into seven sidechains, one of which would include built-in quantum resistance.

Postquant Labs CEO Colton Dillion argued that the Bitcoin community has delayed a fix for years despite the threat being well understood.

“Developers say any protocol upgrade could take 5 to 10 years, but with Quip’s approach, we provide similar protection immediately,” he said.

Roughly 6.9 million bitcoin, including Satoshi’s early holdings are vulnerable to future quantum attacks because their public keys are visible on-chain, according to Project Eleven.