Axven Bitcoin PQ Lab — Phase 2 + Phase 3 research resultsI have been working on an experimental post-quantum research environment to study engineering questions around a possible future Bitcoin migration.
The work currently consists of two evidence checkpoints:
Phase 2 — ML-DSA-44/65/87 measurements, real Bitcoin Core regtest evidence, Classical AND PQ laboratory authorization, provenance and validation.
Phase 3 — fresh regtest evidence generation, deterministic evidence replay, independent receipt validation and fail-closed tamper testing.
This work is strictly
research-only and off-consensus.
Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin consensus and Bitcoin Script were not modified.
EnvironmentBitcoin Core: v31.1
Source commit:
9be056a8a72b624dae9623b2f7bded92c2a21c91
Runtime: WSL2 / x86_64
Python: 3.12.3
cryptography: 48.0.0
Phase 2Final test suite:
239 / 239 tests passed0 failures
0 errors
0 skipped
The experiment was bound to a real confirmed Bitcoin regtest transaction.
Observed transaction properties:
- Serialized transaction: 222 bytes
- Weight: 561 WU
- Virtual size: 141 vB
- Confirmations: 1
- Block height: 102
ML-DSA observationsML-DSA-44
Public key: 1312 B
Signature: 2420 B
Median verify: ~0.279 ms
ML-DSA-65
Public key: 1952 B
Signature: 3309 B
Median verify: ~0.419 ms
ML-DSA-87
Public key: 2592 B
Signature: 4627 B
Median verify: ~0.655 ms
These measurements are laboratory observations only.
They must not be interpreted as Bitcoin transaction or block-space costs because no Bitcoin Script/output/witness representation for ML-DSA has been selected.
No production ML-DSA parameter set has been selected.
Cross-candidate rejectionSix mismatched candidate directions were tested:
ML-DSA-44 -> ML-DSA-65
ML-DSA-44 -> ML-DSA-87
ML-DSA-65 -> ML-DSA-44
ML-DSA-65 -> ML-DSA-87
ML-DSA-87 -> ML-DSA-44
ML-DSA-87 -> ML-DSA-65
6/6 tested mismatches were rejected.This is limited to these tested cases and is not a general cryptographic security proof.
Classical AND PQ laboratory experimentThe experimental authorization model evaluates:
Classical authorization AND PQ authorization
The classical side is an external laboratory boolean oracle.
It is not Bitcoin Core authorization and is not being proposed as a Bitcoin consensus rule.
Phase 2 canonical evidence SHA-256d3fdb272903fb6112db18ec6ad044fbe268937a3302da626914e540cdf863540
The repository validator independently reproduced the same canonical digest.
Phase 3 — deterministic evidence replayPhase 3 is a separate reproducibility checkpoint.
It does not claim to reproduce the historical Phase 2 artifact. Instead, a fresh Bitcoin Core v31.1 regtest E2E artifact was generated and validated before deterministic replay.
Targeted regression gate:
15 / 15 tests passedPhase 3 replay/receipt: 8/8
Phase 2 validator regression: 7/7
Fresh canonical E2E evidence SHA-256:
cf5e2c938e3d21c473bacabedc19c69d208310c937ccf4782ba5c77dffda1a2d
Fresh e2e.json byte-level SHA-256:
859c0e80a37d1af579261ac6c7aa5c52b54fe23ae184a63f9aa1ad52110c345f
The validated evidence was replayed twice.
Both replay outputs were byte-identical.
Replay output SHA-256:
c00db3f7e04d19dce132dbe440e185d4a1ccabd434b07854bb1252e6ecb617b5
The independent receipt validator accepted the intact receipt and returned:
f636897379337e61ebbc6c596fb3fa95bb9b1ae320b4dfc18ea0dd72dbd9f56c
A copy of the accepted receipt was modified by replacing its bound input evidence digest.
The independent validator rejected it with:
ValueError: replay receipt digest mismatch
Exit status: 1
What this research does NOT claim- Bitcoin is not claimed to be quantum-safe.
- Bitcoin Core does not support or verify ML-DSA through this experiment.
- ML-DSA has not been integrated into Bitcoin Script.
- Bitcoin consensus has not been changed.
- No opcode/output/witness semantics have been introduced.
- No production ML-DSA parameter set has been selected.
- No mainnet activation or migration policy has been selected.
Questions / feedbackI would particularly appreciate technical criticism around:
1. What evidence should be collected before attempting any Script-level prototype?
2. What output/witness semantics would be worth experimentally evaluating?
3. How should classical + PQ authorization be studied during a possible migration period?
4. How should exposed versus non-exposed legacy outputs be considered?
5. What transaction/block-space measurements would be most useful?
6. What failure modes should a long migration experiment model?
Repository:
https://github.com/AxvenLabs/axven-bitcoin-pq-labPhase 2 evidence:
PHASE2_FINAL_RESULTS.mdPhase 3 evidence:
PHASE3_LIVE_REPLAY_RESULTS.md
