Nostr Web Client

"over generations" .... Nostr isn't even quantum resistant. Shor's destroys nostr in it's entirety. Not even Grover's and quadratic speedup but the lowest hanging Shor's fruit. Every public key is public! The lower bound for Shor's is 1,700 logical qbits. We're at 24 now, possibly 48. Within 1 generation we will be at the lower bound, if not within 10 years. (If not within 5 years.)

Time to hard fork and start over. A lot of good stuff can be ported over. But this Nostr we have now, there is no chance for it on a technical level, to say nothing of user adoption and all that.

This is 2025. You just cannot build a new protocol on a Shor's un-hardened curve with all the public keys happily public and zero scope for curve migration, it's insanity.

Chicken Legs 1mo ago 💬 1

Yeah there’s not much lead time to become quantum resistant before potential quantum threats can materialise.

I’m new to nostr.. I kind of just assumed there’d be a semi orderly scramble to get the network defended.

Coming from btc, it can take a fair while to get consensus and then develop, and then roll out trial period, and then mass adoption.. by the time you get from the first debate to the mass adoption, you’re running critically close to a “quantum threat arriving in 5 years” scenario..

Hopefully btc, nostr and any other community driven network can get itself covered and converted with time to breathe rather than a wild rush near the end.

Gotta admit I could put my quantum knowledge on a single a4 page though.. Do you recommend any resources to help understand the technical threat to nostr?

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Discussion

Garbage nsec 1mo ago

Bitcoin is also in a bind but has the following on its side:

-The greatest damage to bitcoin requires messing with SHA-256 (not scep256k1), which requires grover’s algo, which is way harder to make useful

-For scep256k1 (shor’s algo, lowest hanging quantum fruit) there is some scope to migrate curves

-Only about 30% of scep256k1 public keys are known (if unknown that provides some protection)

Nostr is in a hopeless situation:

- Everything is scep256k1 (where something else like AES-256-CBC is used scep256k1 is still the weakest link in the dependency)

- Virtually all public keys are known, virtually all events are easily retrieveable

- There is zero scope to migrate curves (despite some nonsense suggestions to the contrary)