AmericanFortress researchers introduced a patent-pending post-quantum signature scheme that could protect the global crypto ecosystem against future quantum attacks without requiring massive migrations of funds.
According to the company, the breakthrough means that even Satoshi Nakamoto’s massive stash of 1.1 million bitcoins, along with nearly 5 million BTC in dormant accounts, can be saved, with a combined value of around $400 billion.
In an interview with CoinDesk, Michal Pospieszalski, CEO of AmericanFortress, explained that dormant and dormant wallets no longer have to be vulnerable to unscrupulous hackers, who could sweep up the loot and dump it on the market with untold consequences.
However, Pospieszalski said a major point of confusion is the older bitcoin. Because Satoshi era wallets are “Pre-BIP32” addresses with no seed phrase derivation and therefore cannot be automatically updated like more recently created wallets. Instead, the AmericanFortress protocol would execute a defensive freeze via a backwards-compatible soft fork.
“Our quantum resistance protocol would automatically freeze and protect those funds until governance decides what to do with them after Q-day,” Pospieszalski said, noting that the community would eventually have to vote to move, burn or redistribute the frozen assets.
“But this means that even Satoshi wallets can be protected with a lower BIP, which we are working on,” Pospieszalski said. “This means integrity for Bitcoin in the future, and that’s just BTC. It applies to all other major chains too, like Ethereum, Solana, and Tron.”
The announcement follows an $8 million seed funding raise co-led by SAVA Digital Asset Fund, Moon Pursuit Capital and 0G Labs. Along with the funding round, the company published a cryptographic paper that identifies specific bottlenecks in network performance that have plagued other post-quantum tests.
This week, a standard quantum safety test on BNB Chain worked but significantly slowed transaction performance by 40%.
Unlike traditional approaches that require entirely new blockchains or exhaustive address rotations, AmericanFortress’ approach uses zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs to prove ownership of the master seed at the time of spend. The strategy implements three distinct solutions: pre-BIP32 raw key protection, standard BIP32 quantum protection, and a high-speed “QBIP32” bypass scheme. Because it integrates natively with existing curves, it does not cause performance degradation.
“It’s just an update to the node and wallet software in that order,” Pospieszalski noted.
The threat to cryptocurrencies is highly concentrated, the AmericanFortress CEO said, adding that while quantum computers cannot crack master phrases, they can reverse engineer individual private keys from wallet addresses whose public keys have been exposed on-chain.
Research indicates that more than $600 billion worth of crypto assets are in this precise vulnerable state, including 100% of Solana addresses, Pospieszalski said, describing this as “common knowledge.”
For active users, migrating to a quantum proof level takes just 50 milliseconds via a simple wallet message, he explained, adding that for inactive seed-derived wallets, protection can be executed programmatically at the base layer.
Pospieszalski said the cost of this quantum proof is extremely low, equivalent to the price of a single aggregated transaction, rather than paying for each historical transaction individually.
Pospieszalski revealed that AmericanFortress is actively licensing the SDK for Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchains in exchange for marketing positioning, although he said the company is open to exclusive acquisitions.
Cryptographic methods for bitcoin are expected to be ready for discussion in the coming weeks, ahead of an official presentation on June 2 in Paris, AmericanFortress said.
Ultimately, Pospieszalski sees this as a turning point for the longevity of digital assets. “A sudden quantum test of BTC is now possible,” he said.
