Just lately, Venture Eleven (a quantum computing analysis group) introduced a 1 bitcoin reward for the primary staff capable of full a problem to exhibit breaking a ECC (elliptic curve cryptograph) key utilizing Shor’s algorithm on a quantum laptop.
The deadline for this problem is April fifth, 2026, that means with a purpose to qualify for the prize a staff should exhibit breaking a key pair it have to be executed earlier than that deadline.
That is frankly a very absurd and meaningless prize for quite a few causes, the primary of which is the deadline of just below a yr from at this time. Even extremely optimistic projections concerning the progress of quantum computing put the timeline of virtually reaching such a purpose at extra like 5-10 years. Anticipating a workable proof of idea demonstration that really breaks a keypair in a single yr is fairly laughable at face worth, even in case you do view quantum computing as a fabric menace within the brief time period.
Subsequent is the issue of financial incentives. A single bitcoin is at the moment value roughly $80,000. That’s frankly not some huge cash within the grand scheme of issues. Particularly with regards to the appliance of a leading edge expertise like quantum computing that may carry out a whole class of computation exponentially sooner than a classical laptop. Think about how far more helpful issues may very well be executed with a working quantum laptop.
You may snoop on web connections no matter TLS, breaking safe connections to banks, fairness brokerages, non-public company networks not utilizing post-quantum cryptography. You may break each non-public messenger software on the planet, you might decrypt any PGP encrypted message despatched over e-mail that you simply knew the general public key for. You may break the whole DNS system’s certificates authority hierarchy, permitting you to impersonate any server on this planet a person tries to connect with.
All of this stuff have immeasurable worth past only a mere $84,000. Why on Earth would somebody with a working quantum laptop publicly reveal that reality to assert a single bitcoin after they may benefit from all these different issues they’d be able to doing?
Okay, let’s sweep all of these prospects apart and faux the whole world magically migrates to post-quantum cryptography except for Bitcoin. It nonetheless is mindless to attempt to publicly declare this prize when you have a purposeful quantum laptop.
Let’s assume you may have a barely performant sufficient quantum laptop, that it takes a good period of time to crack a single key. What number of naked public keys are there securing 50 BTC outputs from the primary mining epoch? THOUSANDS of them. Why on Earth would you crack one, after which go inform everybody publicly to assert a single bitcoin? You’d simply attempt to crack as lots of these early coinbase rewards as potential earlier than folks detected you.
Lastly, the timetable by itself is simply absurd. Quantum computer systems at the moment aren’t even able to factoring prime numbers that folks can do themselves of their heads mentally. In a single yr the expertise goes to leap from that to cracking Bitcoin keys? That’s absurd.
So what the hell is the purpose of this prize besides some publicity stunt? It’s completely meaningless as a severe bounty to perform as a canary within the coalmine for us, irrespective of how involved or unconcerned you’re with the timeframes of quantum computer systems as a menace.
This bounty is a joke.
This text is a Take. Opinions expressed are totally the writer’s and don’t essentially mirror these of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Journal.
