- 1
Sign
Your wallet derives a one-time Winternitz key with 67 secret chains. The message is split into 4-bit digits, and chain i is hashed d[i] times to produce the signature.
- 2
Verify
Anyone finishes each chain with the remaining 15 − d[i] hashes. If every chain lands on the published end, the signature is genuine.
- 3
Compress
The 67 chain ends are hashed together into a single 32-byte leaf.
- 4
Climb
The leaf and 8 sibling hashes rebuild the Merkle root that identifies the creator. One root covers 256 launches.
Why it holds up. Security rests on SHA-256 alone. There is no elliptic curve for Shor's algorithm to break, and Grover's speed-up still leaves 128-bit security.
Signature size. 67 chains × 32 B + 8 path hashes × 32 B + a 4-byte leaf index = 2,404 bytes.