AmericanFortress proposes post-quantum wallet protection for Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana

AmericanFortress has outlined a post-quantum cryptographic design called Zero-Knowledge Proof of Seed Provenance, or ZKPoSP, that it says could help existing Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and other blockchain wallets withstand future quantum attacks without changing wallet addresses, moving funds or rotating keys. The proposal, described in a paper on the Cryptography ePrint Archive, is designed for seed-based hierarchical deterministic wallets and uses zero-knowledge proofs tied to a wallet’s seed phrase, alongside a key derivation design called QBIP32 intended to work across different elliptic-curve implementations. The researchers said the approach replaces the signing procedure rather than the underlying wallet address or blockchain protocol, and argued that legitimate owners could still prove control after “Q-Day” even if individual private keys were compromised. In prototype testing using Rust and the RISC Zero zero-knowledge virtual machine, AmericanFortress reported proof generation times of about 12 to 13 seconds and verification times of roughly 9 to 10 milliseconds. The company also said the design is 21 times more efficient than a comparable Ethereum Foundation proposal, with researchers expecting that advantage could eventually reach 210 times. The system has not been adopted by any blockchain network and would require support from developers, wallet providers, exchanges, miners and users.