From: Giulio Golinelli <golinelli.giulio13@gmail.com>
To: Bitcoin Development Mailing List <bitcoindev@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [bitcoindev] Falcon Post-Quantum Signature Scheme Proposal
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2026 23:01:33 -0800 (PST) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <16e01530-e9dd-481f-8c7f-ca9ccafcfcden@googlegroups.com> (raw)
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Hi everyone,
I am to share a technical demonstration and benchmarking project that
integrates the Falcon post-quantum signature scheme (Falcon-512) into
Bitcoin Core, implemented as a soft-fork within the classic P2WPKH mode.
This work aims to provide a practical reference for possible future Falcon
adoption, especially as it approaches FIPS standardization.
You can find details at this fork
<https://github.com/thisisnotgcsar/bitcoin-falcon>.
*Why Falcon?*
Falcon is a lattice-based, post-quantum digital signature scheme designed
to be secure against quantum attacks. Unlike other PQC candidates such as
SPHINCS+ and ML-DSA, Falcon offers significantly smaller signature and
public key sizes, as well as efficient signing and verification times. It
is implemented in pure C and does not require external dependencies.
*Benchmarking & Results*
Aspect Falcon ECDSA
Public Key Size (B) 897 33
Signature Size (B) 655 71
Verification Time (μs) 57 120
Verification time is more critical than signature creation time in Bitcoin,
since signature creation is performed by clients (wallets), while nodes
focus on verification.
*Integration*
- Falcon was included into the codebase from the original GitHub
repository.
- The build system (CMakeLists.txt) was updated to support Falcon.
- Falcon verification has been soft-fork enabled via a new script
verification flag.
*Next Steps & Reference*
This project serves as a practical demonstration of Falcon’s promising
performance, highlighting its advantages over currently selected
post-quantum signature algorithms such as SPHINCS+ and ML-DSA, which face
significant time and space limitations. As Falcon approaches FIPS
standardization, this work aims to provide a reference for future adoption
and integration in Bitcoin.
Let me know what you think and if this could be of interest for which case
I can complement the project by integrating Falcon into all the other
spending paths. I also look forward to development/integration corrections.
Best regards,
Giulio
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next reply other threads:[~2026-01-22 7:09 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 13+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-01-22 7:01 Giulio Golinelli [this message]
2026-01-22 12:48 ` [bitcoindev] " waxwing/ AdamISZ
2026-01-23 3:45 ` Giulio Golinelli
2026-01-22 14:35 ` [bitcoindev] " 'conduition' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
2026-01-23 7:12 ` Giulio Golinelli
2026-01-23 15:36 ` 'Mikhail Kudinov' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
2026-01-24 13:04 ` waxwing/ AdamISZ
2026-01-25 21:54 ` cassio gusson
2026-01-26 10:33 ` 'Mikhail Kudinov' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
2026-01-26 15:21 ` waxwing/ AdamISZ
2026-01-27 16:07 ` 'conduition' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
2026-01-24 13:31 ` Giulio Golinelli
2026-01-27 16:39 ` 'conduition' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
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