CoinDesk
AmericanFortress researchers introduced a patent-pending post-quantum signature scheme designed to secure the global crypto ecosystem against future quantum attacks without requiring mass fund migrations. CEO Michal Pospieszalski told CoinDesk the protocol could protect Satoshi Nakamoto's roughly 1.1 million bitcoin and nearly 5 million BTC in other dormant accounts — a combined stash worth about $400 billion — via a backward-compatible soft fork that freezes vulnerable pre-BIP32 addresses while governance later decides whether to move, burn, or redistribute the funds.
The company closed an $8 million seed round co-led by SAVA Digital Asset Fund, Moon Pursuit Capital and 0G Labs, and released a cryptographic paper identifying the network performance bottlenecks that have stalled prior post-quantum trials. Earlier this week a standard quantum-security test on BNB Chain worked but slowed transaction throughput by 40%; AmericanFortress says its ZK-based approach integrates natively with existing curves and causes no performance degradation, requiring only a node and wallet software update.
Why it matters
Roughly $600 billion in crypto assets sit in wallets where public keys have already been exposed onchain, including effectively all Solana addresses, per the company. Master seed phrases are not crackable, but individual private keys derived from revealed public keys are — meaning every legacy UTXO and dormant account becomes a target the moment a sufficiently powerful quantum machine goes live. The threat is asymmetric: a coordinated sweep of Satoshi-era and long-dormant wallets could dump trillions of dollars of coins onto thin order books, with consequences no exchange or stablecoin could absorb.
AmericanFortress's design separates the problem into three layers — pre-BIP32 raw key protection, standard BIP32 quantum protection, and a high-speed "QBIP32" derivation scheme — and uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify master seed ownership at the point of spend.
Frequently asked questions
-
What did AmericanFortress actually announce?
A patent-pending post-quantum signature scheme backed by an $8M seed round, designed to protect dormant Bitcoin — including Satoshi's ~1.1M BTC — from future quantum attacks via a backward-compatible soft fork and ZK proofs, with a Paris presentation scheduled for June 2.
-
How does the scheme protect Satoshi's wallet if it has no seed phrase?
Pre-BIP32 addresses cannot be upgraded like modern wallets, so the protocol would automatically freeze and secure the funds at the base layer until governance votes on whether to move, burn, or redistribute them after Q-day.
-
What performance impact does the scheme have?
AmericanFortress says its ZK-based approach integrates natively with existing curves and causes no throughput degradation, requiring only a node and wallet software update — in contrast to a BNB Chain test earlier this week that slowed transactions by 40%.
-
How much crypto is actually exposed to quantum risk?
Per the company, roughly $600B in crypto assets sit in wallets with public keys already exposed onchain, including effectively 100% of Solana addresses, because quantum machines can reverse-engineer individual private keys from revealed public keys.
-
Who funded the round and what is the commercial play?
An $8M seed was co-led by SAVA Digital Asset Fund, Moon Pursuit Capital and 0G Labs. AmericanFortress is licensing the SDK to L1 and L2 chains in exchange for marketing positioning and says it remains open to exclusive acquisition.
WatcherGuru
TheBlock
CoinTelegraph
WuBlockchain