Zcash's Plan to Beat the Quantum Threat

Summary

CoinDesk Research's report outlines Zcash's three-step plan to achieve full quantum resistance, prioritizing privacy protection for historical shielded transactions that cannot be retroactively secured. The network's design mitigates harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks, and step one is already live on testnet.

• Zcash aims to become fully quantum-resistant through a three-step process.
• The order of steps matters: protecting privacy first because historical shielded transaction data cannot be made private again if breached.
• Harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks are less effective against Zcash because decryption keys are not stored on the blockchain.
• Step one is live on testnet, allowing users to recover funds if current cryptography is broken.
• Step two adds stronger quantum protection, and step three completes the transition to a post-quantum network.
• The full report is available at coindesk.com/research.