Bitcoin quantum security upgrade may take 7 years to complete

Ethan Heilman, co-author of the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal BIP-360, stated that in an optimistic scenario, it may take seven years for the Bitcoin network to fully achieve quantum resistant security. The proposal is expected to take two and a half years to complete code review and testing, followed by six months for activation. Upgrades to wallets, custodians, lightning network nodes, and fund management software will take several years to complete. If quantum computing makes a breakthrough, the timeline will be advanced, but the overall task remains challenging. BIP-360 proposes to add the "Pay to Merkle Root" output type, which hides the public key to eliminate quantum fragile paths while maintaining Taproot upgradability and functionality. The proposal is for backward compatibility with soft forks, where non upgraded nodes will ignore new output types, but short-term attack defense needs to be achieved through the addition of quantum signature algorithms after soft forks.