What is Tidecoin?

Tidecoin is a peer-to-peer proof-of-work cryptocurrency built on Bitcoin Core’s architecture and redesigned so transaction ownership does not depend on ECDSA. Every mainnet transaction has used Falcon-512 post-quantum signatures since the genesis block on December 27, 2020.

The short answer: Tidecoin keeps the parts of Bitcoin that still work in a quantum era, such as the UTXO model, script system, block validation model, and peer-to-peer node architecture, and replaces the parts that do not, especially ECDSA signatures and BIP32-style wallet derivation.

This page is a plain-language overview. It is not the protocol specification; see Protocol for consensus details and Whitepaper for the full technical argument.

What Tidecoin Changes

The goal is not to create a new smart-contract platform or execution environment. Tidecoin is deliberately conservative: preserve the Bitcoin-like money and node model, replace quantum-vulnerable cryptography, and add upgrade paths where cryptographic agility is needed.

Why It Exists

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and many other chains rely on signatures whose security rests on the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem. Shor’s algorithm breaks that problem on a sufficiently large fault-tolerant quantum computer. That does not mean such a computer exists today, but it does mean the migration problem is real and time-bound.

Blockchains have an additional problem: transaction data is public and permanent. Once a public key appears on-chain, a future attacker can use archived chain data as input. A migration that happens after key exposure cannot make the old exposure disappear.

Tidecoin’s answer is to start from post-quantum signatures at block zero instead of trying to retrofit them after years of classical-key exposure.

What Makes It Post-Quantum

Tidecoin uses lattice-based signature schemes from the NIST post-quantum cryptography process:

Falcon-512 is compact enough for blockchain transactions while avoiding ECDSA’s quantum failure mode. ML-DSA adds standardized signature alternatives with different performance and size tradeoffs.

Mining and Supply

Tidecoin has no premine and no ICO. Coins enter circulation through proof of work.

Pre-AuxPoW mainnet mining uses YespowerTIDE, a CPU-oriented memory-hard proof of work chosen for early distribution. The planned long-term security model is scrypt merged mining with Litecoin through AuxPoW. That transition is also the activation point for several post-AuxPoW consensus features.

Use the Mining section as the source of truth for current mining instructions and pool integration. This Learn page explains the design, not the operational mining setup.

Who the Docs Are For

One-Sentence Summary

Tidecoin is a Bitcoin-architecture proof-of-work cryptocurrency that has used post-quantum transaction signatures from genesis and is designed to add broader post-quantum cryptographic agility through height-gated consensus upgrades.

See also: Why Tidecoin?, Post-Quantum Primer, Activation Status, Design Positioning.