Bitcoin Researchers Demonstrate Post-Quantum Wallet-Ownership Proof—but Recovery Is Not Live

Project Eleven says it funded and built with Binius developer Jim Posen a post-quantum zero-knowledge proof that uses a wallet’s BIP-32 derivation history to distinguish a legitimate owner from someone who obtained the address key with a future quantum computer. The prototype reportedly generated a proof in 243 milliseconds and verified it in 40 milliseconds on an M5 MacBook Air. It supports three Bitcoin address formats, but is unaudited, does not work as a recovery feature on Bitcoin today and would require protocol integration. It also cannot recover early wallets lacking the required hierarchical derivation path, including the coins commonly attributed to Satoshi.