From: "'Brandon Black' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List" <bitcoindev@googlegroups.com>
To: Mike Casey <mcasey0827@gmail.com>
Cc: Bitcoin Development Mailing List <bitcoindev@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [bitcoindev] Hourglass V2 Update
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2026 13:23:30 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <aadRUrmtko-uyvt2@console> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <9336f5a4-5c28-4c1b-af29-a8462b7a9377n@googlegroups.com>
Hi Mike, list.
My personal response to this type of proposal remains a firm, and
time-unlimited, "no".
There are, broadly speaking, two possible ways in which secp256k1
breaks: Gradually and suddenly.
If it's gradually then the risks to P2PK, P2TR, and public public key
(lol) coins grows gradually, most likely with some large outputs being
stolen first and liquidated in some gradual way (because the first actor
to have access to the break is likely a low time preference entity who
doesn't want to crash the price). Moreover, assuming a gradual break, we
will have long since deployed an alternative cryptosystem and everyone
will have had ample time to migrate. Those coins not migrated are fair
game.
If it breaks suddenly, that could put us in a situation where nobody has
had a chance to migrate their coins AND the type of actors first gaining
access to the coins are more likely to be low time preference dumpers
who will fight each other for the coins using perverse miner incentives
to protect some residual value. This itself would threaten the very
tenability of the system.
Bitcoin has long held the philosophy of NYKNYC which implies the
reverse: YKYC. If we decided to break this for any but the most imminent
and obvious destruction of the system, we have defeated the system's
very raison d'être. In other words, the only time we should limit or
disable an old cryptosystem on bitcoin is in the greatest extremity of
an immediate and total break of the cryptography wherein participants
have not had time to migrate and the break is instantly widespread.
So, unless someone has access to secret evidence that secp256k1 is
already broken (in which case we should be disabling all such signatures
entirely, not trickling them through) we should absolutely not consider
restricting the property rights of those using any secp256k1 signature.
This is regardless of how we feel about public keys being public which
is an entirely other topic.
For me to take a proposal of this general nature seriously, it would
have to treat all secp256k1-protected outputs the same (as the
supposed security of hashed output types relies strictly on public
information being secret).
All the best,
--
--Brandon
On 2026-02-10 (Tue) at 12:47:22 -0800, Mike Casey wrote:
> In response to feedback, the Hourglass proposal to mitigate against
> potential mass liquidation of P2PK funds has been enhanced to further limit
> spend amounts from such outputs to only 1 bitcoin per block.
> https://github.com/cryptoquick/bips/blob/hourglass-v2/bip-hourglass-v2.mediawiki
>
> Prior discussion of the original Hourglass proposal:
> https://groups.google.com/g/bitcoindev/c/zmg3U117aNc/m/lDCMs9j7EAAJ
>
> Thoughts & feedback welcome!
--
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2026-03-03 21:26 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 15+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-02-10 20:47 Mike Casey
2026-02-13 22:06 ` Light
2026-02-16 22:03 ` Jameson Lopp
2026-02-17 0:31 ` Light
2026-02-17 13:02 ` Garlo Nicon
2026-02-17 13:24 ` Isabel Foxen Duke
2026-02-23 18:47 ` Isabel Foxen Duke
2026-02-25 14:39 ` Bob Burnett
2026-02-25 16:46 ` Jameson Lopp
2026-02-18 14:33 ` Mike Casey
2026-02-19 3:26 ` Alex
2026-02-21 6:22 ` neonrooks
2026-03-03 21:23 ` 'Brandon Black' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List [this message]
2026-03-06 15:37 ` Ian Quantum
2026-03-06 15:46 ` 'Brandon Black' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
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