Blockchained Post-Quantum Signatures

Abstract

Inspired by the blockchain architecture and existing Merkle tree based signature schemes, we propose BPQS, an extensible post-quantum (PQ) resistant digital signature scheme best suited to blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs). One of the unique characteristics of the protocol is that it can take advantage of application-specific chain/graph structures in order to decrease key generation, signing and verification costs as well as signature size. Compared to recent improvements in the field, BPQS outperforms existing hash-based algorithms when a key is reused for reasonable numbers of signatures, while it supports a fallback mechanism to allow for a practically unlimited number of signatures if required. We provide an open source implementation of the scheme and benchmark it.